
CliUMBS 



FROM THE 



EOU^D TABLE. 



A FEAST FOB EPICURES 



JOSEPH BARBERci \ 



" He lookod about him to the left aiid right, 
With the proplielic eye of Appetite." 




NEAV YORK: 

LEY P OLD T & HOLT, 

1866. 



vn 



"*'"^ OF COJIOBESS 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by 

C. H. SWEETSER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Com-t for the Southern Distriot of 
New York. 







v^ 



BILL OF FARE, 

I. — The Esthetics op Epicureanism. 

n. — ^Breakfast. 

III. — Sprinq Fish. 

IV. — The Eruits of June. 

V. — Dinner among the Ancients. 

YI. — Dinner among the Moderns. 

VII. — A Few Words about Puddings. 

VIII. — ^Vegetarians and Vegetables. 

IX. — Fishing. 

X. — The Streams: a poem. 

XI. — Supper. 

XII. — October — Sentimentally and Sensuously Con- 
sidered. 

XIII. — The Poetry of Good Cheer. 

XIV.— Satory Stanzas for November. 

XV. — Epigastric Poetry. 

XVI. — ^A Thanksgiving Rhapsody. 

XVII. — The Brookside in May. 



This contribution to epicurean literature is for the most part made 
up of articles which have appeared in " The Round Table,'''' over the 
signature of "J. B." These initials have generally been inter- 
preted, and correctly, as those of Mr. Joseph Barber. Their 
frequent appearance has been the source of so much pleasure to 
the readers of " The Round TaUe,''^ that its editors have been tempted 
to make this compilation. Some of the articles have appeared in 
other journals, Mr. Barber having been engaged iu writing upon 
this class of subjects for a number of years. As a culinary critic, 
fisherman, and singer of country lyrics, he writes of that which lie 
knows, a fact which will become apparent to the reader of these 
sketches. 



^ 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

A PRBPAOE is generally more or less apologetic. The humility 
with which authors invite attention to the fruits of their labors is 
proverbial. They seem to regard the public as a creature of some- 
what savage, but not altogether ungenerous, instincts, whom it is 
prudent to conciliate by a show of self-distrust, before venturing 
within reach of its paw. For my own part, however, I utterly 
despise the Uriah Heep style of self-introduction ; and, therefore, 
this little volume is tendered to the reading world without the obse- 
quious bow with which some " very humble " writers put forth 
their lucubrations. 

If a book is so stupid, or otherwise objectionable, as to need an 
apology, it is an impertinence to publish it No one has a moral 
right to bore people at their own expense. But the truth is, that, in 
nme cases out of ten, the author, who asks pardon of the commu- 
nity for obtruding his brainwork upon its notice, is much less difiB- 
dent than he desires to appear. In his heart of hearts, he laughs 
ha I ha I and anticipates success. My rule, however, is to take the 
author who insists that he is without merit at his own valuation, 
and decline to read his book. I think it only just to his moral 
(Character to assume that he has not belied himself. 

Taking it for granted that there are tens of thousands of 
persons who, like myself, take a writer at his word, when he 
says that his productions are valueless, and not wishing to give 
society a distaste, in advance, for the following pages, I positively 



vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

decline to assert that they are uninteresting. If the essays and 
sketches have any merit, the good-natured reader will find it out ; 
if otherwise, the critics will not shrink — they never do — from the 
performance of their "unpleasant duty." With these oflf-hand 
remarks, I leave the " Crumbs " in the hands of my good friends 
the editor and publishers, to be scattered hither and thither among 
the tasteful public. May they prove "crumbs of comfort," and, 
" like bread cast upon the waters, be found after many days." 

J. B. 
Nbw York, May, 1866. 



CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 



THE ESTHETICS OF EFIGUEEANISM. 

I FLATTER Diyself that I know what good hving is, 
and how to enjoy it. The man who feeds merely to 
supply the wants of nature, who simply eats to live, is 
a person with whom I have no sympathy; while the 
coarser individual, with whom quantity is every thing 
and quality nothing, is a fellow whom I heartily despise. 
It is to beings of a finer texture of soul and body that 
I address myself, people whose palates respond to deli- 
cate flavors as the educated ear responds to melodious 
music, and who can detect an error in the seasoning of 
a dish as readily as Arditi would detect a false note in 
the execution of a symphony. 

From the dawn of civilization, good cooks have been 
held in honor. With the exception of those ungenial 
Democrats, the Spartans, who mortified the flesh on 
horrible black broth, and bread that required a hammer 
to break it, all the classic nations of antiquity were 



8 CEUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

fond of luxurious banquets. To be sure, their notions 
of the dehcious were somewhat different from ours ; 
but the world was comparatively in its babyhood in 
those days, and had not arrived at culinary discretion. 

The people of Sybaris, in Italy — a city that flourished 
in the palmy days of the Greek Republics — were 
amoDg the most liberal of the ancient patrons of good 
cooks. It must be confessed that the Sybarites were a 
finical, Miss Nancy set of fellows. They slept on rose 
leaves, and coddled their cuticles into such a state of 
extreme sensitiveness, that a leaf with a wrinkle in it 
gave them pain. They would not permit any noisy 
work to be done within their jurisdiction, and some 
Sybarite exquisites, according to an ancient historian, 
were once thrown into hysterics by the crowing of a 
cock. But of a good dinner they had a lively ap- 
preciation. The giver of such a repast was declared 
the benefactor of his country, and his cook received a 
golden crown, and was admitted as a " dead-head " to 
all the public games. They considered the Spartans — 
and on that point I agree with them — a parcel of know- 
nothing starvelings. A Sybarite, having on a certain 
occasion been induced to wet his lips with their national 
potage^ remarked, with a shudder, that " he no longer 
wondered the Lacedaemonians sought death in battle, 
seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with their 
detestable broth." 

Antony, who lost the world and his life for "a 



THE ESTHETICS OF EPICUREANISM. 9 

colored woman," displayed a more delicate taste in his 
dinners than in his amours. He took a cook with him 
to Egypt, who was decidedly the Ude of his day, and 
Avhen the artiste was fortunate enough to please the 
palate of Cleopatra, her infatuated lover gave him a 
city for his pains, just as I should give a waiter at a 
hotel half a dollar for securing me a choice cut of 
venison. 

The old Roman kitchen was any thing but a Kepub- 
lic. In fact, the head cook or Archimagirus was a 
regular despot. Standing on a raised platform, and 
armed with an enormous spoon, pointed at one end like 
a spear, he not unfrequently smashed the heads and 
pricked the ribs of his subordinate flunkies, in the in- 
tervals between the tastings of the gravies and sauces. 
The style in which the Roman cook prepared a porker 
for the table is minutely described by a Latin author, 
who is thus translated by the elder Disraeli : " The 
animal had been bled to death by a wound under the 
shoulder, whence the master-cook extracted the entrails, 
washed them with wine, and hanged the animal by the 
feet. He crammed down the throat stuffings already 
prepared. Then covering the half of the pig with a 
paste of barley thickened with wine and oil, he put it 
in a small oven where it was gently roasted. When 
the skin was browned, he boiled the other side, and 
then taking away the barley paste, the pig was served 

up boiled and roasted." In other words, it was roasted, 
1* 



10 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

boiled, and spoiled. They manage these things better 
in Cincinnati. However, we must not complain cf the 
Roman method of treating the animal, since within the 
last forty years pigs have been whipped to death in 
England to m:ike their flesh tender. 

It is a sad reflection on the gallantry of antiquity, 
that up to the era of Charlemagne ladies were rarely 
invited to dinner or supper parties, and it should be 
mentioned, as a fact complimentary to the sex, that, 
from the period when they took their seats at the fes- 
tive board, the tone of social life improved. At that 
time, too, they began to manifest an interest in cookery, 
displaying their talent ir^ the invention of new dishes, 
and now and then ruining their lords (as they ha\'e 
been known to do in later days) by the magnificence 
of their tastes and contemptuous disregard of expense. 
It so happens, however, that the names of but few cele- 
brated female cooks have come down to us from aukl 
lang syne. Even in modern days the cuisinicrs of the 
masculine gender have eclipsed the lady artists in 
fame, although, if we take the latter en masse, the 
former can not hold a candle to them. 

The Duke of Newcastle — not the nobleman who 
visited us with the Prince of Wales, but one of 
his ancestors of the last century — ^had a cook named 
" Chloe," whose sauces for game were something won- 
derful. Her great triumph was stewed mushrooms, 
but having nearly killed one of her master's guests 



TEE ESTHETICS OF EPICUREANISM. 11 

with a specimen of her skill in that line, the duke 
ordered all his mushroom beds to be destroyed ; 
whereat, says Horace Yfalpole, in one of his funny 
letters, "a voice of lamentation was heard, Chloe 
weeping for her mushrooms, and they were not." 

The golden age of cookery in France was the era of 
Louis XIV. and Louis XV. It was in the reign of the 
former that Vatel, the cook of the Prince of Conde, 
stabbed himself to death with his sword (a spit would 
have been a more appropriate weapon) because the 
codfish did not arrive in time to be dressed for a state 
banquet. More heroic though, in my opiriion, was the 
death of the Austrian consul's female cook at Sinope 
some years ago. The Russian fleet wns blazing away at 
the Turks, and the cannon-balls were flying thick and 
fast through the consul's garden, when this courageous 
young woman crossed the line of fire to gather some 
herbs for stuffing. Alas ! a thirty-two pound shot cut 
her in two with the thyme and marjoram in her hnnds. 
I don't know whether the Austrian erected a monu- 
ment to her memory or not, but if he did not he was 
an ingrate. She was clearly an enthusiast in her art, 
and preferred the risk of death to the sacrifice of a 
flavor. 

Many of the celebrated French dishes now in 
vogue were the invention of distinguished personages. 
Madamo de Maintenon, the mistress of Louis XIV., 
was the author of the curl-paper cutlets, which now 



12 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

bear her name. The dyspeptic stomach of the Grande 
Monarque would not bear grease, and the paper was 
applied to absorb it from within and prevent its eon- 
tact without. And, by the way, very delicious things 
these cutlets in curl papers are. The Bourbons, to a 
man, were epicures, and their mistresses and courtiers, 
as a matter of course, turned their attention to the 
cuisine. That stupid old wrong-head, Louis XVIII., 
got up a very good soup, to which he piously gave the 
name oi potage d Xavier^ and it is said he was just 
about to be helped to some of it when he heard of Bona- 
parte's escape from Elba. Thereupon his spoon and 
jaw dropped simultaneously, and, without allowing 
himself even a "hasty plate," he at once made prepa- 
rations to leave Paris. 

It would be easy to show by citations from history, 
that a refined taste in eating and drinking has generally 
been a characteristic of well-educated men in all 
countries. Indeed, the association between literature 
and good cooking dates back to the dawn of learning. 
Cadmus, who introduced letters into barbaric Greece, 
was the cook of a monarch — the King of Sidon. Thus, 
literature and good living were twins, and as a modern 
writer well remarks, " to the ex-cook of the King of 
Sidon we owe, perhaps, all the epics that ever were 
written,^' 



BREAKFAST. 13 



BREAKFAST. 

With all their pretensions to epicureanism, the old 
Romans did not know how to breakfast. Antiquity's 
fashionable " spread " for that meal, even in the man- 
sions of the patricians, consisted of simple bread and 
cheese. The "equestrian order" starved themselves 
in the early part of the day, to gorge on the abomina- 
ble compounds they called luxuries, late in the after- 
noon. And yet those mistaken voluptuaries fancied 
they knew how to live, and while reclining on their 
couches, in an atmosphere redolent of garlic, and 
stuffing their epigastriums with sow's paps, incomplete 
rabbits obtained by the " Cassarean operation," and 
lampreys fattened on the flesh of slaves, considered 
themselves in the seventh heaven of sensuous enjoy- 
ment. We only remember to have read of one Roman 
who cared much about his dejeujier — the beastly Galba. 
Suetonius says he boo-hooed for it, if his servants 
failed to bring it to his bedside at daylight. His im- 
perial majesty, however, was an exception to all diet- 
ary rules ; for, after devouring supper for six, over- 
night, he could dispatch a breakfast of the same pro- 
portions, in bed, the next morning. No wonder his 



14 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

bloated imperial face was of the same tint as his im- 
perial toga. 

If travelers in Africa are to be believed, breakfasts 
in the interior of that continent are scarcely of a kind 
that would induce an individual not " to the manner 
born " to rise early to partake of them. Bruce assures 
us that in Abyssinia they consist of live-ox collops, 
highly peppered to supply the absence of cooking — the 
collops being made into sausage-shaped fillets, which 
are thrust into the mouths of the guests by black 
Hebes, sandwiched in among the males of the company. 
The civilized epicure has no objection to a steak only 
''just done through;" but the Abyssinian style seems, 
if we may use the expression, to be running " rareness" 
into the ground. Clapperton, who visited another part 
of Afiica about a third of a century later than Bruce, 
mentions, among the items of the Sultan of Baussa's 
breakfast carte^ grilled water-rat and fried and stewed 
crocodile eggs. The eggs, it may be supposed, were 
somewhat musky, but as we have Dr. Kane's testimony 
that rat soup is not a bad breakfiist in the neighborhood 
of the North Pole, a grilled rodent may possibly be 
endurable under the equator. 

Leigh Hunt, who had a very judicious notion of 
good living, and who, when he played jackal to Byron, 
was fed, Tom Moore says, with " sops every day from 
the lion's own pan," has left behind him a pretty fair 
recipe for a "breakfast in cold weather." Here it is : 



BREAKFAST. 15 

" Im,primis, tea and coffee ; secondly, dry toast ; 
thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, 
something potted; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, 
knives, forks, etc." This bill of fare is well enough as 
a specimen of an Englishman's idea of the morning 
meal ; but it would not meet the views of a Scotchman 
or an American. We like the accompaniments of the 
Essayist's breakfast better than the collation itself 
'' One of the first things," says Hunt, '' that belongs to 
a cold weather breakfast is a good fire. There is a 
delightful mixture of the lively and the snug in coming 
down to one's breakfast-room of a cold morning and 
seeing every thing prepared for us — a blazing grate, a 
clean table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed 
faces and combed heads of a set of good-humored 
urchins ; and the sole empty chair, at its accustomed 
corner, ready for occupation." A very nice picture ; 
but one would like to have some guarantee for the be- 
havior of the urchins. It was our lot, once upon a 
time, to breakfast with a being of that genus who, 
although perfectly good-humored, was possessed of a 
lively desire to wash his hands in the slop-bowl and 
put his chubby little feet in the butter— idiosyncrasies 
of urchinhood which interfere with the sublime calm 
necessary to epicurean enjoyment and perfect digestion. 
This may seem to some folks an ill-natured reflection 
on " rosy childhood," but we venture to say that the 
breakfast-table professor of the Atlantic Monthly, or 



16 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE, 

any other man who understands the philosophy of the 
thing, will entirely agree with us. 

Few "peoples," as our Hungary friend, Kossuth, 
would say, have a better idea of the proper constituents 
of a breakfast than the " cannie Scots." The " Glasgow 
bodies," and eke the burghers of Inverness, at the foot 
of the Highlands, thoroughly Understand what is good 
for the inner man in the morning. Potted char — a 
rare fish of the Scotch lochs— game pies, hot buttered 
barley bannocks and oatmeal cakes, muffins, rolls, 
crumpets, waffles, venison pasty, pickled salmon, 
potted lobster, buttered toast, broiled " finnan baddies," 
and broiled bacon are among the dainties they set 
before newly-risen man in that hospitable region. It 
must be confessed that they flank these comestibles 
with forbidden diluents — such as Glenlivet and Usque- 
baugh. But what will you have of it — the climate 
is drizzly, and the "meikle Scotch mist" seems to 
quench the fiery influence of the stimulants ! 

But, after all, an American breakfast — especially in 
the fall or winter season — is the beau ideal of a matu- 
tinal feast. " Juno, when she banquets," has nothing 
equal to it. What is Olympian ambrosia to buckwheat 
cakes ! And then at cofiee-making we can beat even 
the French. Not that we always do it ; but there are 
artistes among us whose decoctions of the fragrant 
berry put the Parisian cafes to shame. 

Our broiled spring chicken is a thing to thank heaven 



BREAKFAST. 17 

upon with epicurean unction. Talk of your English 
spatch-cocks — they are not worthy to be named in the 
same decade with it. Done of an amber brown, 
anointed with fresh butter, and duly seasoned, it is a 
dish to take the reason prisoner. Some prefer broiled 
quail, and one might 

— " decide without great wrong to either, 
It were much better to have both than neither." 

We wonder how the Children of Israel " fixed " their 
quails. K Moses was the man we take him to have 
been, he split his birds down the back, and cooked 
them on a gridiron. Again, the American porter-house 
steak — would that it had a more melodious and less 
toperish name — is an article sui generis. John Bull 
believes in rump steak — pummeling it with a rolling- 
pin makes it tender ; and yet, despite this quarter-staff 
practice, it is 7iot tender after all. Old Front-de-boeuf 
can not compete with us in the steak department. 
He won't acknowledge it, for he is one of those obsti- 
nate old "heavy fathers" that never give any thing 
up ; but the fact is patent to the unprejudiced of all 
nations. Of buckwheat cakes we enjoy a monopoly. 
The less enlightened countries of Christendom have 
not had the sagacity to adopt this crowning glory 
of the breakfast table. Like monkeys who warm their 
shiftless hands by fires which they have not sense enough 
to keep up, the outsiders of the earth partake with rap- 



18 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE, 

ture of the products of our griddles, without having 
the capacity to mix the batter and fry the articles 
for themselves. Ah! those cylindrical columns of 
dimpled, umbered pancakes, light as snow newly 
fallen, and more delicious than *' honey or the honey- 
comb " — ^how can Europe do without them ? Baptized 
with sweet butter, they " almost raise a mortal to the 
skies," and might "tempt an angel down." One 
can not write of them without feeling a pleasant ting- 
ling of the palate, and a craving sensation a little 
below the thorax. 



THE FRUITS OF JUNE. 19 



THE FRUITS OF JUNE. 

In the first month of summer, the epicure, looking 
around him, finds abundant reason to thank the Great 
Provider who perfects with rain and sunshine "the 
kindly fruits of the earth, so that in due time we may- 
enjoy them." 

The cry of " Straw-ber-ees !" in linked sweetness 
long drawn out, resounds through our streets, and as 
peripatetic Teuton and Celt, male and female, make 
proclamation of their advent, we listen with delight to 
the well-remembered shibboleth. Well do the fruiter- 
ers know the public weakness for strawberries. Their 
windows are a-glow witli plump and luscious beauties, 
newly torn from their leafy beds to tempt the senses of 
the voluptuary, and we advise all economical persons, 
pledged to eschew expensive luxuries, to avoid the fruit 
establishments on Broadway when strawberries make 
their first appearance. Blessed be the bosom of our 
common mother that proffers such rosy, juicy cones 
to our eager lips. If she feasted her children thus 
daintily all the year round, we for one would never ask 
to be weaned, but be content to continue always a baby 
at the breast. Heraldry did well to inwreathe the 



20 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

ducal coronet with strawberry leaves — thus ennobling 
not the fruit, but the bauble. This, according to Cam- 
den, was a Saxon idea, and it proves conclusively that 
our ancestors who '' drew a good bow at the battle of 
Hastings " were by no means " the swine " that their 
ISTorman conquerors represented them to be. " To him 
who in the love of nature holds communion with her 
visible forms " gastronomically, there are few among her 
esculent gifts more agreeable than the lush and ruddy 
"first fruits" of June. Poetry has not been silent on 
their merits. Othello's handkerchief — the one he srave 
his wife, that had " magic in the web of it " — was 
" spotted with strawberries," a proof that his tasteful 
mother, who subdued his father entirely to her love 
with it, was accustomed to present it to the old 
Morisco, filled with Hovey's seedlings or some other 
fine variety, whenever she wanted to make a fool of 
him. French and Italian, as well as Anglo-Saxon 
rhymers have celebrated the fruit, and a bard of 
Erin, whose name has escaped the memory of the com- 
pilers, has immortalized in dulcet strains the flavor of 
" a dish of ripe strawberries smothered wid crame." 

Strawberries and cream ! What a suggestive theme 
for an epicurean lyric! Strange that the rhyming 
Greeks and Romans never touched upon it. What a 
topic it would have been for Anacreon, who sang in 
praise of beastly wine-bibbing, till, in conformity with 
poetic justice, he was choked by a grape. What a 



THE FRUITS OF JUNE. 21 

text for Aristophanes, or Philoxenus, or any of the 
Deipnosophists (Anglice, dinner philosophers) whose 
couplets are recorded by Athenseus. But perhaps 
strawberries were unknown to the classical epicures. 
It must have been so, otherwise they would have be- 
queathed us a " taste of their quality " in verse. 

What poetic prose Epicurus would have improvised 
over a dessert of strawberries and cream. Let us 
imagine how that comfort-taking philosopher would 
have delivered himself thereanent, had he been fortu- 
nate enough to have the inspiring subject before him. 

" Behold !" he might have exclaimed, " this mound 
of ambrosial rubies, exhaling ravishing incense, and 
charged with fluids that would cause the palates of the 
gods to tingle. Now (suiting the action to the word) 
I crown its red summit with saccharine snow. (White 
sugar was unknown to the Greeks, but we are only sup- 
posing a case.) See how the shining coronal reddens 
at the contact, like a light cloud above Parnassus 
flushed by the setting sun. Ha ! here is an ampulla, 
filled with cream from the meadows of Thessaly, favor- 
ite haunts of the clover-seeking bee. May the kine of 
Tempe live forever ! How rich and thick it is — Juno 
has no such lacteal nectar ! (They did not water their 
cream in the golden age.) Now to make libation. 
See how the streaming flood topples down the sugary 
crest of the fruital hillock, sweeping it, an avalanche of 
sweetness, into the lake of juice below. Slave, a ladle ! 



22 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

(The spoons of two or three thousand years ago were 
all ladles.) Now I crush the melting cones, and the 
outgushing crimson life-blood of the fruit wreathes into 
and marbles the golden cream. What delicious edible 
lapis lazuli !" 

Thus Epicurus might, could, would, or should have 
said, had strawberries (as well as letters) been culti- 
vated in the groves of the Academy, and by the phi- 
losophers of the " Garden," and cried by peripatetic 
hucksters in the streets of Athens. We might have 
put the praises of the most delicious of desserts into 
more modern and Christian phraseology, but there is 
nothing like your " word-painting." With a classical 
sugar-coating, the grossest anachronisms will go down. 

We would willingly give our anti-stoical friend 
Epicurus an opportunity to say his say while imbibing 
the delicious compound we have assisted him to pre- 
pare ; but there are limits to graphic description, and 
we know of no combination of words capable of doing 
justice to the feelings which thrill the organs of taste 
and deglutition under such circumstances. Sensational 
writing is powerless to portray them, and in attempting 
to realize them poesy would " pale its ineffectual fires." 

As the strawberry makes its exit, bobbing its fare- 
well to us from the brims of mint-plumed juleps and 
amber cobblers — which last were better named " amber 
gods" — raspberries, next in deliciousness among the 
fruits of June, appear. Of these thimbles of Pomona, 



THE FRUITS OF JUNE. 23 

the golden ones are best, although those of a cornelian 
hue are chiefly cultivated in this country. In Europe 
the latter are seldom brought to table, although they 
make a "jam" of which urchins with a sweet tooth (see 
Tom Hood) seldom get a satis. The red kind are also, 
upon the whole, better than the golden, with cream ; 
but raspberries and cream are " flat and unprofitable " 
in comparison with the rich compound at the prepara- 
tion of which we " assisted " a few paragraphs above. 
Both the strawberry and the raspberry, like most of the 
good things of this life, are transient blessings. "Two 
months, nay, not two months," are the limit of their 
stay. 

" All that's bright must fade, 

The brightest still the fleetest. 
All that's sweet was made 
But to be lost when sweetest." 

Even sweet lips lose their honey as they wither, and it 
is doubtful whether the bees troubled Plato after he 
had passed his grand climacteric. 

Thank Frigidity, however, we can have the flavor of 
our early fruits after they have faded from vine and 
bush. Have we not our strawberry and raspberry ice- 
creams, that cool and enrapture us at a gulp. A rare 
confectioner is Jack Frost. A benison on the artificial 
caves where he dwells, like a benevolent troglodyte, 
the summer long. King John asked winter to " thrust 



24 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

its icy fingers in his maw " in vain, but into our hap- 
pier gullets he introduces them sweetened. And by 
the way, plain ice-cream, with ripe strawberries or 
raspberries crushed into and intermixed with it, is a 
compost at once cooling and captivating. An thou 
hast not tried it, reader, there is yet a new pleasure for 
thee under the sun. 

Something should be said of cherries — though, to 
tell the truth, they are not a wholesome fruit. Never- 
theless, the full-blooded ox-heart, and the white-heart 
with its glowing sunward cheek, are not to be despised, 
and, if the digestion be vigorous, even cherries can do 
no harm. The birds eat them by the peck and do not 
find them dyspeptic, but then, to be sure, the human 
stomach is not a craw. 

" But enough," says the reader, " of the fruits of 
June. When the delicious realities are with us, what 
is the use of all this rigmarole?" Fairly put, we 
admit, but somehow this sweet season has the same 
effect upon us that it has upon the blackbirds — it 
makes us garrulous. A few couplets in honor of our 
pet month and we have done: 

June, fair noontide of the year, 

Joy is in thy atmosphere. 

Flowers and fruits, together bom, 

Pour from thy proliflc horn : 

Perfume, beauty, light, and song, 

To thy golden reign belong. 

June is here ! 



THE FRUITS OF JUNE. 25 

Strawberries in the fields are seen 
Blushing 'neath their leafy screen ; 
Ripening cherries in the lane 
Glow like painted porcelain, 
And in yonder meadow, hark 1 
Sings the yellow-breasted lark, 

June is here I 

With their blushing burden stoop 
Rose-briers by the cottage stoop ; 
Honeysuckles spice the air. 
Blooms are opening everywhere, 
Round whose nectar-cups the bee 
Pours his maudlin melody, 

June is here ! 

Stars, bright isles of heaven's blue sea, 

Ye may homes of angels be. 

And this planet's landscapes cold. 

To the scenery ye unfold ; 

Yet this world to mortals given 

Is to me foretaste of heaven 

When June is here ! 



26 CRUMBS FROM TEE ROUND TABLE. 



DINNER AMONG TEE ANfCIENTS. 

The dinner-time of the Middle Ages was ten o'clock, 
A. M., the breakfast-time of modern fashion ; and wit as 
only about two hundred and fifty years ago that noon 
was substituted for the dixieme heure, as the court 
dinner-hour in France. In the fifteenth century, a 
dauphin of France dined at sharp ten ; and a French 
historian has been kind enough to hand down to us his 
bill of fare. It consisted of rice soup, with leeks or 
cabbage, a piece of beef, another of salt pork, a dish 
of six hens or twelve pullets, divided in two, a piece of 
roast pork, cheese, and fruit. Let us hope that his 
highness felt better after his refection, which seems, on 
the whole, to have been more fit for a dozen stout 
porters than a delicate prince. The dauphin's supper 
was his dinner dittoed, and it appears, from the 
account of the historian, that appetite was measured 
by rank in those days, inasmuch as barons were only 
allowed half the ration of the heir-apparent ; knights, 
one-fourth ; and chaplains and equerries, one-eighth. 
I am sorry to say that the practice of drinking wine 
after dinner originated with the clergy. In the early 
days of Saxon England, the only dessert was grace 



DINNER AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 27 

after meat; but the chaplain of Queen Margaret 
Atheling, the Saxon queen of Scotland, having com- 
plained to her majesty that the Scotch thanes rose from 
table before he could pronounce the j^os^jora^K^^a^ bene- 
diction, she offered a cup of wine to each one of them 
who would sit still till the thanksgiving was over. 

But I am getting discursive. Let us take up the 
good things of dinner in their regular order. Soup 
and fish naturally come first. The earliest particular 
mention of soup that occurs to me is the biblical account 
of the mess ot pottage for which Esau sold his birth- 
right. There can be little doubt that it was a fine 
article ; a man would scarcely dispose of his inheritance 
for a dish of soujje maigre. Isaac and his son Jacob 
were fond of soup, and we know how Rebecca made it 
for them, viz. : of pieces of fresh-killed kid, seethed in 
milk, thickened with meal and herbs. Not a bad stew 
by any means ; only they had no pepper in those days, 
and no Worcestershire sauce. The Marquis de Cressey, 
the famous French gastronomist, had a peculiar soup 
for Lent, the recipe for which he has bequeathed to us. 
It was an onion soup, composed of small bulbs, sliced 
and put into a stew-pan, with a lump of fresh butter 
and a little sugar. They were turned over the fire 
until of a fine golden color, when they were moistened 
with broth, and a little bread was added. Before the 
Boup was served, its flavor was perfected by the addition 
of two glasses of very old cognac. The probability is, 



28 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

that the compound was not bad to take. After morti- 
fying the flesh on his potage^ the Marquis topped off his 
Leuten fare with salmon and asparagus ! Talleyrand 
introduced Parmesan cheese with soup, and presented 
after it a glass of dry Madeira. Careme, who stands 
A No. 1 among French cooks, originated at least a 
dozen excellent soups, and from Tide, Kitchener, and 
Soyer we derive upward of twenty more. The inven- 
tor of turtle soup is unknown — it is probably the result 
of a series of improvements dating back to the era 
when Columbus discovered the West Indies. Be that 
as it may, it is the king of all soups, and next to it in 
gastronomic rank stand terrapin stew and mock turtle. 
Fish is no less important to a good dinner than soup. 
There is an Oriental proverb, to the effect that " your 
Arab despises fish," which, as the Arabs dwell where 
fish are not, is equivalent to saying " the grapes are 
sour." The Jews are not permitted by their laws to 
eat fish destitute of scales or fins. Hence, eels, a surfeit 
of which killed a Christian king, are never eaten by 
strict Hebrews. A story is told of St. Kevin, a religi- 
ous gentleman who lived by the fish he caught in one of 
the Irish lakes, which shows that he was subjected to a 
severe temptation during one of his piscatorial excur- 
sions, but whether he fell into the snare laid for him or 
not, I do not now remember. It seems that a belle of 
that ilk, named Kate, put the following leading question 
to him : — 



DINNER AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 29 

" You're a rare hand at fishing," says Kate, 

"It's yourself, dear, that knows how to hook 'em ; 
But when you have caught 'em, agrah I 
Don't you want a young woman to cook 'em ?" 

If St. Kevin said " No," lie was not the Irishman I 
take him to have been. 

Oysters were considered a luxury in Greece and 
Kome, though heaven knows the Greeks and Romans 
could have known nothing of the flavor which belongs 
to the finer specimens of the oyster family. The Medi- 
terranean oysters are literally unfit to eat, being wishy- 
washy little dabs of gelatine. Ah ! if the Greek phi- 
losophers had only tasted our Shrewsburys and Saddle- 
Rocks, would they ever have inquired if oysters had 
souls ? JSTot a bit of it. They would have swallowed 
the moUusks, and waived the theology. 

Red mullet (the fish vulgarly called the " sucker" is 
a mullet) was a particular weakness of the Roman 
gourmands. Yitellius, Drusus, Tiberius, and all that 
class of gormandizers, thought nothing of giving as 
many sestercia as would have amounted to three hun- 
dred dollars of our money, for a single mullet weighing 
five or six pounds. They had rather a disgusting 
way of preparing the fish for the cook. For the 
benefit of persons of delicate stomachs, I will give the 
process. In the first place, the mullet was scaled alive ! 
It was then dropped into a glass vessel filled with sea- 
water, mackerel's blood, and salt, and as it squirmed 



30 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

in this pickle, and its color gradually faded from red to 
white in the agonies of death, the bon vivants, lolling 
on their couches (for the luxurious Romans were too 
lazy to sit up at their banquets), applauded the spec- 
tacle. There was no law against cruelty to animals in 
ancient Rome, it seems. 

Turbot, a fish that does not exist in our waters, 
though comparatively common in some of the seas of 
Europe, was another favorite Roman dish. The Ro- 
mans kept the fish in huge tanks, filled with salt water, 
and fed them, occasionally, on rebellious slaves, by 
which their peculiar flavor was no doubt heightened 
and improved. 

Those who have tasted " Albany beef," and know 
what an immense deal of boiling it requires to get the 
oil out of it, will be unable to see why the sturgeon is in 
England a perquisite of the crown. Such is the fact, 
nevertheless ; but however much sturgeon's roe may be 
relished by royalty, it is truly " caviare to the general." 

Tradition has transmitted to modern times a curious 
" fish story," which may be interesting to persons whose 
organ of credulity is as " a mountain to a mole-hill," 
compared with their organ of caution. It seems that, 
in a certain pond attached to a convent in Burgundy, 
the number of fish always kept tally with the census 
of the monks. If a monk sickened and died, a fish 
followed suit. If the convent received a new brother, 
straightway a fish was supernaturally added to the 



DimER AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 31 

pool. Finally the institution went to the dogs, and 
the fish went to the — well, no matter where ; they dis- 
appeared. With the exception of the great fish story 
in the Arabian Nights, this is the most extraordinary 
bit of piscatory literature extant, and the two are 
equally authentic. 



32 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 



LINKER AMONG THE MODERN'S. 

Perhaps Byron puts the case a little too emphati- 
cally, when he calls the bell that summons us to this 
meal " the tocsin of the soul." Sententious Thuiiow 
tells us, and General Jackson has borrowed the expres- 
sion without acknowledgment, that " corporations have 
no souls," and yet corporations are proverbially fond 
of what are called good dinners. There is, however, 
a refined enjoyment experienced by the large-minded 
epicure while discussing the chefs-d^muvres of an ac- 
complished cook, which sordid bodies, born of corrup- 
tion and held together by ''the cohesion of public 
plunder," can never experience. The poetry of dining 
is a touch above boards of aldermen. Only men of 
generous instincts, cultivated tastes and talents, and 
perfect physical organizations, know how to dine. It 
does not necessarily follow, however, that because an 
individual has a palate of horn, to which all flavors are 
alike, he is therefore a bad fellow. Pancks, who ate 
as if he were " coaling," had a heart that would have 
done honor to the most genial epicure; but it is none 
the less true that a genial epicure is generally a person 
with kindly sympathies and of a lovable nature — one 



DINNER AMONG THE MODERNS. 33 

capable of appreciating the excellent qualities of a 
Pancks, though he might object to dining with him, 
and who would not put his legs under the mahogany 
of a sleek-headed Caseby, though it were covered with 
all the edible rarities that wealth could supply. 

Although we Americans are, past doubt, " the most 
enlightened people under the sun," and in all respects 
fully up to Shakespeare's description of the " paragon 
of animals," the majority of us have much to learn in 
the art of dining. It has not pleased Heaven to over- 
stock the American kitchen department with superior 
artists. On the contrary, most of our cooks seem to 
have come from the antipodes of that region which 
sends us such excellent meat. The human intelligences 
we get from the intelligence offices are far from being 
as intelligent as they represent themselves to be. Ire- 
land, of course, possesses the finest peasantry in the 
world, but their culinary education has been neglected ; 
while Germany, if we are to believe Tom Hood, has 
not yet emerged from the dark ages of cookery. Yet 
we rely chiefly upon the hel][) of these two countries 
for the preparation of our dinners. Our wives and 
daughters, although, as everybody knows, they '' com- 
bine French ease with English modesty," and play 
freely on the piano, do not, as a general thing, under- 
stand the mysteries of gravies and sauces, and the 
chemistry of puddings. 

There is one radical mistake in American cookery 
2* 



34: CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

which deserves especial castigation. Until it is re- 
formed, we shall never rank among the "peoples" who 
understand the esthetics of dining. We do not roast 
— we bake. This is a degrading confession to make, 
with " the eyes of Europe upon us ;" but it is too true 
that from the ove?i, not the sj)it, come at least seven- 
eighths of the browned joints which, by a conventional 
fib, we term our roast meats. Fellow-countrymen (and 
women), this is the chief blot upon our culinary escut- 
cheon — the bar sinister on our kitchen coat-of-arms. 
Into caves of heated iron our cooks thrust their beef, 
veal, mutton, pork, poultry, game, etc., and after leav- 
ing them there to kill each other's flavors till overdone, 
take them out, and have the assurance to send them 
to our tables as things roasted ! If the articles were 
put in one at a time, as victims were cast into the 
brazen bull of Phalaris, the deed were barbarous ; but 
to bake them together, to the confounding of all dis- 
tinctions between their several savors, is a solecism in 
cookery that it would be base flattery to call heathen- 
ish. An anonymous tenant of one of our first-class 
boarding houses, who has wreaked his sorrows in 
verse, devotes a quatrain to the subject, as follows : 

At six o'clock, in hungry mood, at dinner I appear — 

The roast beef tastes like beef and pork, the pork tastes very 

queer. 
The pastry has a twang of both ! I know, and no mistake, 
One oven is responsible for that collective bake 1 



DINNER AMONG THE MODERNS. 35 

Who that has had his lines cast in one of those un- 
pleasant places where persons of educated appetites 
are disgusted at so much per week, will fail to recog- 
nize the truthfulness of the stanza. 

Then as regards our gravies. But the plural is out 
of place here. In point of fact, the United States, as 
a nation, has but one gravy. There are a tasteful few 
who vary their gravies to suit their dishes — rendering 
unto mutton that which is mutton's, and to beef that 
which is beef's ; but the great majority bestow upon 
all the same fearful compound of melted fat, with a 
precipitate of slush. How it is made, we know not, 
and hope never to know. There is a certain magic in 
it, however. It makes every thing which is slushed 
with it taste the same — reducing all the delicacies of 
the season to a common Vandal level. We can never 
rank as a refined nation until this semi-mucilaginous 
abomination shall have been stricken from our carte. 
Epicurean reader, you know, better than we can tell 
you, how necessary it is to ask (even at what are 
considered *' good tables ") for " gravy out of the dish," 
in order to prevent your slice of beef from being over- 
slaughed with a greasy avalanche from the tureen. 

In the matter of dressing and serving up fish, we 
are guilty of many Gothisms. We boil, instead of 
steaming, our salmon and codfish, and send them to 
table in puddles of fish gruel, instead of perfectly dry 
(as they ought to be), and inclosed in white damask 



3Q CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

napkins. As we have one gravy for our meats, so 
we have one sauce for our fishes, viz., melted butter, 
thick and glutinous with flour, and more fit for the 
paper-hanger's or bill-sticker's purposes than for Chris- 
tian digestion. Occasionally a sprinkling of minced 
hard-boiled eggs is stirred into the insij^id batter, and 
then it is called egg-sauce, and the last state of the nui- 
sance is worse than the first. Of shrimp-sauce, lobster- 
sauce, oyster-sauce, fennel-sauce, and a dozen other 
condiments that give a rare relish to fish, nine-tenths 
of even our first families are, we regret to say, pro- 
foundly oblivious. 

It is also a lamentable fact that a man may dine out 
twice a week the year through in New York, without 
encountering in his round half a dozen palatable pud- 
dings. Yet there are at least a hundred delectable 
and wholesome varieties of the article. But pastry is 
preferred in this country — ^probably because it is more 
indigestible. K there be any thing an American likes 
to outrage, it is his digestion. He appears to entertain 
no respect whatever for his stomach or duodenum, im- 
j)Osing on them the most hopeless tasks and cruel 
penances. One of the ways in which he manifests his 
hostility to them is, by eating against time, and com- 
pelling his gastric juices to do the work which nature 
intended for his teeth. That people who bolt their 
dinners do sometimes live to be grandfathers may be 
considered an extraordinary manifestation of tenacity 



DINNER AMONG THE MODERNS. 37 

of life in tlie human species, under the most unfavorable 
circumstances. 

But enough of censure. Let us turn from baked 
meats, unwholesome pies, and the lightning dispatch 
style of mastication, to subjects more agreeable. We 
have the finest oysters extant, and know how to cook 
them. Good oysters are the voluptas suprema of the 
epicure, for they are capable of affording more pro- 
longed enjoyment than any other edible. It is impos- 
sible to say how many of the gelid luxuries may be 
swallowed direct from the shell without producing re- 
pletion. The excellent creatures carry their own sol- 
vent with them, and help to digest themselves. His- 
tory tells us that the Romans were not insensible to 
their merits, and when Vitellius went out a-yachting he 
always had plenty of them stowed away in the hold of 
his trireme. But what did he or any of his race know 
about oysters ! The miserable Mediterranean bivalve 
is beneath contempt — a little, flavorless dab of semi- 
transparent jelly, fit companion for the sea-hedgehogs 
with which the ancient gourmands were accustomed to 
mince and stew it. Nor are the English mollusks 
much better. Put half a table-spoonful of mucilage 
made of Iceland moss into about the same quantity of 
a mild solution of copperas, and you will have a very 
fair imitation of the English "native." Contrast one 
of these mistakes of Neptune with a " Shrewsbury " or 
a " Saddle-rock " — plump, appetizing, salacious — and 



38 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE, 

commiserate the English epicures. In the art of frying, 
broiling, roasting, and stewing these gifts of Providence, 
we stand alone. Newly-imported John Bull says he 
misses " the coppery flavor, you know ;" but, oh ! what 
quantities of them he puts under his capacious vest. 
He shows his taste, however, by generally eating them 
raw. The eremite of the sea is most delicious the 
instant after he has been martyred. Break into his 
cell with burglarious knife, cut the tie thai, binds him 
to his pearly home, and, ere his ichorous juices have 
quite lost the electric principle of vitality, put the floor 
of his little tenement to your lips and gulp him in. 
If there be a sensation more thrilling than that expe- 
rienced during his brief transit over the palate, we have 
yet to enjoy it. It may be thought by some of our 
readers, perchance, that oysters do not properly come 
under the head of dinner ; but we hold the truth to be 
self-evident — at least to all who have made the experi- 
ment — that half a dozen or a dozen on the half shell 
are the best possible preliminary to the regular courses 
of a banquet, call the banquet by what name you will. 
Lady Morgan had a very excellent notion of the 
esthetics of epicureanism, and has left on record a de- 
scription of a dinner cooked by the immortal Careme, 
which it would be a pleasure to quote, if it were not too 
long. Her ladyship was the guest of Baron Rothschild, 
and Anthony Careme — who was to cookeiy what 
Bacon was to philosophy — was at the head of his 



DINNER AMONG THE MODERNS. 39 

kitchen cabinet. She says in substance, that it was 
imi30ssible to conceive that the vulgar elements, fire 
and water, had any agency in producing such sensuous 
compounds as the feast comprised. *' Distillations of 
the most delicate viands, extracted in silver dews with 
chemical precision, formed the fond of all." This is 
rather too hyperbolical perhaps, but the next sentence 
tells the story better. " Every meat presented its own 
natural aroma ; every vegetable its own shade of ver- 
dure." Mark the simplicity of high art. It is only 
your culinary quacks that extinguish the true flavors 
of nature's dainties with a superfluity of artificial ap- 
pliances. 

" With less genius," says Lady Morgan, " than went 
to the composition of this dinner, men have written 
epic poems ; and if crowns were distributed to cooks 
as to actors, the wreaths of Pasta and Sontag were 
never more fairly won than that which should have 
graced the brow of Careme for this specimen of the 
intellectual perfection of an art, the standard and gauge 
of modern civilization." With all her foreign afiecta- 
tions and occasional slip-slop, Mlladi had a very credit- 
able conception of the science of good living. 

While looking over a file of English papers a few 
weeks since, we noticed an advertisement of an institu- 
tion for the difiusion of culinary knowledge among 
mankind (or rather womankind), called the "School of 
Cookery," which has lately been opened in London. 



40 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUITD TABLE. 

There, for a moderate fee, a servant receives a full 
course of instruction from a competent chef^ and, when 
it IS completed, is furnished with a diploma. The idea 
is excellent, and worthy of being acted upon on this 
side of the Atlantic, where the comestibles of the land, 
the rivers, and the sea, are shamefully mis-cooked both 
by indigenous know-nothings and imported barbarians. 

Note. — Since the above was first printed, we learn that Prof. 
Blot, of France, has acted on the above idea, and has been very 
successful in his school. — Ed. R. T 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT PUDDINGS. 41 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT PUDDINGS. 

Much undeserved ridicule has been cast upon John 
Bull, because of his fondness for pudding. The French 
have adopted his roast-beef, spoiling it, however, in 
theu' kitchens by over-cooking, and insulting it in their 
bills-of-fare with the epithet "ros-bif;" but they still 
regard its complemental accompaniment with a feeling 
akin to contempt. The more fools they, for in all their 
long list of inflated and m^2iimg patisserie.^ there is not 
a kickshaw equal to it. If there is anything in which 
motherly Mrs. Bull excels, it is in concocting puddings. 
She makes them of so many sorts, that " custom " can- 
not " stale their infinite variety." Fortunately for her 
well-fed lord, she is not too ethereal for kitchen pur- 
poses. She is not endowed with a soul above batter. 
Whatever her drawing-room accomplishments, she 
stoops to culinary cares, and thereby " stoops to con- 
quer ;" for, after all, one of the roads to man's heart is 
down his esophagus. It is horribly unsentimental, and 
veiy disparaging to the creature " in apprehension how 
like a god," to say so ; but when this being, " noble in 
reason," has wedded a highly educated woman from 
motives of the purest love, it adds to the fervor and 



42 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

depth of his affection to find that the same fair fingers 
that deftly sweep the harp and manipulate the piano 
can also blend harmoniously the ingredients of a pud- 
ding. If it had been the luck of Hamlet to espouse 
the beautiful Ophelia, he would not have considered 
her sweet songs the less melodious had she been capa- 
ble of beating up a' puding^ which is, we believe, the 
Danish for the subject of our article. 

Of this wholesome and excellent comestible, there 
are, as everybody knows, innumerable sorts and sizes, 
and, as *' one star differeth from another star in glory," 
so do they. There are inconsiderable dumplings which 
may be compared to the lesser lights of the galaxy, 
and pancakes which may be likened to nebulae, seeing 
that they are " collections of matter " (or rather batter), 
" thinly diffused through a large space," and spheres of 
sweetness, which may be described as orbs of the first 
magnitude. Greatest among the greatest is plum-pud- 
ding. Once, when a rare specimen of that eminent 
luxury was before us, and the spii'it of jingle upon us, 
we ventured to celebrate its praise in rhyme. The 
verses are not worthy of the subject-matter (more 
properly subject-batter), but here they are. It will be 
seen that we essayed to be Byronic — a common fault 
of commonplace bards : — 

TO A CHRISTMAS PUDDING. 

Orb from a chaos of g^od things evolved, 
Rounded, while plastic, in a tightened rag ; 



A lEW WORDS ABOUT PUDDINGS. 43 

Globe whose creation's not in doubt involved, 
Whose mold and matrix was a pudding-bag. 

No sphere of which astronomy can brag 

Compares with thine. Perchance the sun may be 

A world half fire, half scoria and slag, 
Or it may not : what is the sun to me, 
Since for my system's center I have thee ? 

I know thy " elements " — when mixed and how — 

Work of a Cuhnary Providence. 
Methinks I see the raw materials now, 

Muid and soUd. to a batter dense 
Turned by the cook's *' supreme intelligence." 

Such was thy origin. Upon my life, 
In thy concoction there was common-sense. 

Toward thee I yearn, thou orb with richness rife, 

" Planned, ordered, and perfected " by my wife. 

Probers of earth, geologists, avauntl 

With all your strata — granite, flint, or slate ; 

Look at this " fissure," as with knife aslant 
The " spotted globe " I glibly excavate! 

What's your " formation of remotest date," 
Compared with this but now together thrown ? 

Behold the " specimen " upon my plate ! 

Is it not worth — the soft impeachment own — 

Tons of your " hard-pan " and your " pudding-stone ?" 

Sir Isaac Newton was a wondrous man, 

So was Galileo, ditto Tycho Brahe ; 
Fellows that knew of orbs the girth and span, 

And how to cook the public up a star. 



44 CRUMBS FROM TEE ROUND TABLE. 

But could they make a good pliuu-pudding ? — hoh 1 
"What was their spice of learning good for ? — say 1 

What use to us are twinMing spheres afar ? 

Prom " Charles's "Wain " our beeves derive no hay, 
The "Dipper " 's empty, dry the " Milky Way." 

Send your philosophers with me to dine. 

I'll teach them sometliing that will do them good — 
How to enjoy, in reason, wholesome wine, 

And that a Dinner, rightly understood. 
Is not (Heaven save us 1) a mere mass of food. 

But Taste's rich offering, worth its weight in gold. 
Meanwhile, my dinner waits — I must conclude. 

Orb of my heart 1 no orbs that monarchs hold 

Are worth one segment from thy circle roUed. 

Plum-pudding, like the planet to which it is an 
honor, was gradually perfected. It was at first mere 
spoon-meat, but finally acquired consistency, and be- 
came the solid luxury we see it now. Robert Ar- 
gyllon, master-cook to William the Conqueror, having 
presented to that distinguished fiUibuster a dainty dish 
called la groute — otherwise, plum porridge — on the day 
of his coronation, thereupon received as a reward for 
his palatable invention a fine estate (wrenched of course 
from some "Saxon churl") entitled the Manor of 
Addington. This is not a tradition, but an item of 
history recorded in Domesday Book, and to be seen 
there at the present day ; and barring the fact that the 
property was stolen, we are not prepared to say that it 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT PUDDINGS. 45 

was unrighteously bestowed. From plum porridge, in 
the fullness of time — plum pudding. The cognomen 
of the individual who put the porridge into a bag, and 
compressed it into the smallest possible compass with 
a ligature, has not come down to us with the improved 
article. He may have been one of the Stewards, But- 
lers, or Cookes, whose names figure among the patro- 
nymics of the old English nobility, and were undoubt- 
edly derived from the offices they filled. Whoever he 
was, he deserved well of his country and of mankind. 

But this right royal dish, although for " all time," like 
Shakespeare, is not for every day. Simpler puddings 
suffice for ordinary occasions, and their name is legion. 
For example, Yorkshire pudding, browned under the 
roasting-joint, and saturated with its savory juices; 
boiled batter pudding, the fair white brother of plum ; 
ground-rice pudding, a delicious compound of rice 
meal, eggs, milk, and sugar, lightly baked; light 
dumplings, made of risen dough, which, when duly 
boiled (say for twenty minutes), are capital, with wine 
sauce; Indian pudding (see that the meal is well 
scalded)^ an indigenous luxury which every American 
lady ought to know how to *' fix ;" apple fritters, the 
most piquant of all the sweetened products of the 
frying-pan; suet pudding, equally good baked and 
boiled; carrot pudding, sweet-potato pudding, and a 
host of others with names familiar to us as household 
words, but which, simple as their composition is, very 



46 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

few of our cooks, native or immigrant, know how to 
j^repare properly. Any one of them is more agreeable 
to a healthful palate than the American fruic-pie (which 
is not a pie at all, but an exaggerated tart), with its 
sodden under-crust, and flavor of inferior butter. The 
demon of flatulence lies perdu in that abortion of the 
oven ! Even hasty-pudding, though it has been over- 
eulogized by Joel Barlow, is better than the premium 
ofiered for indigestion in the shape of a double-crusted 
pie. 

Married ladies who love your lords, give them pud- 
dings. If you know not how to make them, take Miss 
Leslie to your hearts and learn. She is guilty of some 
errors, but practice will enable you to rectify them. 
Your husbands are driven to " bitters " by pastry ; for 
some tonic solvent is absolutely necessary to enable 
their stomachs to assimilate the " leaf crust" and heavy 
understratum of what are called "home-made pies." 
The phrase, by the way, is often a misnomer, for not a 
few of them come from the nearest bakery, or, worse 
still, the corner grocery. 

Consider, O matronly beauty and fashion of America, 
that of outraged digestion come "peccant humors," and 
of these irritation and family jars. It concerns the 
health of your spouses and your own peace, that you 
cultivate the art of pudding-making, and indeed culi- 
nary art generally. Crocheting and Afghan -knitting 
are pretty amusements ; it is pleasant, no doubt, to 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT PUDDINGS. 47 

spend the forenoon among billowy silks and rippling 
ribbons at the dry-goods stores ; and gossiping morning- 
calls are simply delightful ; but, if it is not asking too 
much of beings only a little lower than the angels, 
won't you go occasionally into the kitchen — taking your 
daughters in your hands — and see to the boiling, the 
baking, and the roasting ? It is a shame, we know, to 
burden you with such plebeian cares. What is man 
that you should be mindful of him — the selfish 
tyrant ? But you wish him no harm, we are sure, or 
yourselves either ; and yet, where there is no proper 
supervision in the kitchen department, who can say 
that there may not at any time be " death in the pot !" 



48 CRUMBS FROM TEE BOUND TABLE. 



VEGETARIANS AND VEGETABLES. 

The tMn-blooded philosojoliers who insist on classing 
man with the herbivorous animals misrepresent him in 
spite of his teeth. His dental apparatus is as well 
fitted for piercing and rending as for crushing and 
grinding, and from the shape and sharjDness of his 
incisors it is fair to infer that Providence intended 
him to eat beef with his potatoes. He can^ it is true, 
live on bran bread and garden esculents ; indeed, we 
have known several white-faced individuals who sus- 
tained nature, after a fashion, on this sort of diet ; but 
their milky complexions were a verification of the 
proverb, "You cannot get blood out of a turnip." 
Benjamin Franklin, when an apprentice, tried vegeta- 
rianism, but soon returned to his mutton, and so 
ravenously that he devoured an entire leg of it, on 
which several of his friends had been invited to dine, 
before the expected guests had made their appearance. 
He confesses in his autobiography that the appetizing 
savor of the roasted joint overcame his respect for the 
laws of politeness and hospitality. Sylvester Graham, 
who taught that the relation between lenten fare and 
longevity was that of cause and efiect, had many 



VEGETARIANS AND VEGETABLES. 49 

disciples during liis lifetime ; but as he unfortunately 
threw discredit on his own theory by dying at the age 
of fifty or thereabout, his system subsequently fell into 
disrepute, and we are acquainted with several rene- 
gades from Grahamism who are now enjoying a ripe 
and ruddy old age, under the influence of porter-house 
steaks and other animal stimulants. Some beef-eating 
wag has satirized the idiosyncrasy of the famous es- 
chewer of meats rather happily in the following 
stanzas : 

" There was Graham, a patron of squashes and bran — 

He whose Christian name was Sylvester ; 
He was pale, slight, and dry, quite a gravyless man — 
"Was this fanatic roast beef detester. 

" He delighted in biscuit, he doted on rice, 
And all meats did forever aside throw, 
And averred that carnivorous tastes were a vice — 
In the midst of his triumphs he died, though." 

Nevertheless, vegetables are essential elements of good 
living, and as healthful as they are delicious. It is 
Jeames Yellowplush, we believe, who describes the 
most unexceptionable " swarry " he ever sat down to, 
as consisting of due proportions of mutton and turnips. 
The Romans, who understood the principles of hygiene 
nearly as well as we understand them, and applied them 
much more rigidly than we do, regulated the use of 
" garden sauce " by penal statute. Every citizen was 



50 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

compelled to temper his flesh diet with " greens " enough 
to keep his blood cool, and, from their connection either 
with the enactment or enforcement of the laws relating 
to vegetable food, many of the great families of Old 
Rome seem to have derived their appellations. The 
name of Lentilus tells its own story ; Fabius is from 
faha^ a bean; and Cicero from cicer, a kind of pea. 

The bean was a pet esculent of the ancients. Iso- 
dorus says it was the first morsel that passed down 
the throat of man ; but, as his information on the sub- 
ject must have been somewhat vague, we do not yield 
implicit credence to his ipse dimt. Of all the faha 
tribe, commend us to the Lima bean. The haricot 
blanc, or white kidney-bean, is also excellent, whether 
eaten in its immature state, pod and all, or when full 
grown and without its sheathing. It gives its name 
to a savory French stew, of which, however, it is very 
seldom an ingredient. Beans should be steamed, not 
boiled, and the only dressing they need is a little salt 
and a lump of fresh butter. New England would 
scarcely pardon us if we failed to mention its staple 
luxury, salt pork and baked beans ; and so, not to be 
uncourteous to the orientals, we freely admit that their 
favorite pabulum is exceedingly palatable — to those 
who relish it. Let it not be imputed to us as a fault, 
but rather as a misfortune, that we prefer the two 
articles separate, and do not violently affect either. 
Still we would quite as lief partake of the dish sacred 



VEGETARIANS AND VEGE2ABLES. 51 

to Saturday night in the *' land of steady habits," as 
of raw kidney-beans dressed salad fashion — a Yisi- 
gothic abomination eaten with great gusto by the first 
Napoleon. Possibly the Little Corporal's caprice in 
the matter of pulse may have grown out of his admira- 
tion for Alexander the Great, his military model, who 
introduced the haricot blanc from India, and set the 
fiishion of bean salads in Macedon and Greece, whence 
it was probably transmitted to Rome. 

The Latin race seem to have been remarkably fond 
of peas. The rowdy Roman youths were accustomed 
to munch them at the circus and the theater, just as 
our Bowery boys discuss peanuts in the Thespian tem- 
ples of that locality ; and pea-peddlers roamed about the 
Coliseum while the bloody sports of the arena were in 
progress, shouting "Peas! peas! gray peas !" as vocife- 
rously as the venders of oranges and cakes cry their 
wares in modern "amphitheaters." Wisely spake 
Solomon, when he said, "There is nothing new under 
the sun." Repetition is the law of history. 

And yet there are exceptions to the rule, for after 
all the Romans knew nothing about ^reen peas. These 
dainty products of the kitchen-garden were an un- 
tasted luxury until the middle of the sixteenth century. 
They did not exactly blush unseen, but nobody 
thought of shelling and. cooking them. At length a 
Frenchman — ^may his name, which was Michaux, live 
forever ! — discovered that they were edible. And here 



62 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

let us drop a tear of commiseration over the privations 
of our Christian ancestors. Up to the year 1550, or 
thereabout, they ate their spring lamb without green 
peas, and without mint sauce ! Let us be thankful that 
we live in an age when marrow-fats and mint are uni- 
versally appreciated! By the way, a sprig of the 
latter should always be boiled — or rather steamed — 
with the former. It imparts to them a rare flavor. 
There be cooks of heathenesse who make pea-soup of 
their green peas, sending them to table in a puddle of 
green water that looks as if it had been dipped from 
a stagnant pool. We are sure that no reader of the 
Mound Table permits such gaucheries in his or her 
cuisine. Solution of pulse is a thing abominable. 

Treatises innumerable have been written on the 
potato, and many of them include the fib that it was 
sent by Raleigh's Virginia colonists to England about 
the year 1586. As it is not indigenous to any part of 
North America except Mexico, and could not have 
been naturalized on the banks of the Roanoke early 
enough to have become an export at that date, the 
canard is palpable. It was probably introduced into 
Europe from Quito by the Spaniards, but did not 
reach England until several years after the period 
usually assigned to its advent there. Even as late as 
the middle of the last century it was described in a 
London publication as " a root found in the New 
World, consisting of knobs held together by strings," 



VEOETARIANS AND VEGETABLES. 53 

and which *' perhaps, if you boil it with dates, may 
serve to keep soul and body together among those who 
can find nothing better." It is a singular fiict that the 
sweet potato, now almost obsolete in Europe, was 
a "delicate dish" at English tables years before the 
"curse of Ireland," as Cobbett maliciously calls our 
mealy old friend^ had crossed the Atlantic. The po- 
tato, as we all know, is not what it was. " Modern 
degeneracy " has reached it. It is apt to be as rotten 
at the core as a mercenary politician. Moreover, it is 
shamefully misused in the cooking. The French pro- 
fess-to have a hundred ways of preparing it, but after 
all it is best when simply boiled, baked, or roasted. 
Cooked any way, however, it is pi-eferable to its coarse 
cousin, the West Indian yam, which is the flattest and 
most insipid of vegetables. 

Cabbage for those who like it. For our part we 
leave it to the Teutons. Sauer-Jcraut and slaa may be 
ambrosia to Germans and Hollanders, but so is Lim- 
burger cheese, and our olfactories have their little 
prejudices. The cabbage, like the onion, is a reminis- 
cent vegetable. The Egyptians made a god of it, 
which, however, was no compliment, as they had a 
knack at deifying nuisances. Hippocrates recom- 
mended it for the colic — probably on the homeopathic 
principle, similia similibus curantur. We Anglo-Sax- 
ons, while tolerating it on our tables, have shown our 
contempt for it by manufacturing out of the noun-sub- 



64 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

stantive cabbage a verb and a pair of participles of 
infamous significance. 

But the cabbage has a lovely relative that cannot be 
too highly extolled. Live the cauliflower! The flora 
of the temperate zone has nothing equal to it. One 
might fancy its foam-like efflorescence a whip-syllabub 
dropped from the milky way into a goblet of green 
leaves. It is the white rose of the kitchen garden ; a 
natural omelette soufflee ; the curds and cream of vege- 
tation; the — ^but we are confusing metaphors in our 
desire to do it honor. When boiled to tenderness — 
not to "rags" — a spoonful scooped from its bulging 
center, anointed with melted butter that is not pa^te, 
and judiciously salted and peppered, is a morsel which 
it would be f lint praise to call de'ectable. Ahis that 
we must wait until toward autumn for the cauliflower ! 
Rome had a poor substitute for it in the broccoli, 
and yet Tiberius and his son Drusus sometimes all 
but fought for the lion's share of that more difi'use 
and far less delicious vegetable. 

Is asparagus worthy to rank with the cauliflower? 
We hardly know ; but could 

" decide without great wrong to either, 

It is much better to have both than neither." 

Pliny, who appears to have had a lively sense of the 
value of creature comforts, considered asparagus a 
dainty intended by nature to grow everywhere. But 



VEGETARIANS AND VEGETABLES. 55 

nature, unassisted, cannot produce the article in a con- 
dition fit for the table of an epicure. It requires care- 
ful cultivation to raise those large succulent stems of 
which the cuneiform tips are laouthfuls. Terra re- 
quires to be stimulated with much ammonia before 
she is strong enough to mould such vegetable arrows 
and shoot them up into the ligbt, and it is only after 
attempting the exploit for three successive years that 
she accomplishes it satisfactorily. It must be con- 
fessed that eating asparagus is not a graceful em- 
ployment, but by fiequent practice you may learn 
to catch the inverted apex exactly at the proper angle 
every time, always providing that the "grass" is not 
too limp and spindling. In the days of the Caesars, 
three stems of Ravenna asparagus, we are told, 
weighed a pound. The world-conquerors understood 
market-gardening thoroughly, it seems. But, perhaps 
the statement was more exaggerated than the aspara- 
gus. We incline to believe that some of the vegetable 
stories of antiquity are as "fish-like" as they are "an- 
cient." For exfimple, the Hebrew record makes men- 
tion of radishes so gigantic that a fox could burrow 
in one of them, and raise therein a litter of half a dozen 
cubs or so — a tale that has a somewhat legendary fla- 
vor. Much asparagus is ruined by overboiling. The 
green part should be cooked just enough not to break 
with its own weight. It is not necessary to boil the 
vegetable until the handle is of that consistency. 



56 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

It is quite impossible to do justice to the luxuries 
of the kitchen-garden in a single article, so we must 
reserve for the present what we could say, if space 
permitted, touching scores of them which deserve hon- 
orable mention. Our idea of culinary vegetables is 
that they are excellent accessories of the banquet, but 
not very desirable solus. We remember dining sev- 
eral years ago with Mr. Seward, then governor of the 
State of New York, at the Graham House, a noted 
veocetarian boardings-house. The dinner consisted ex- 
clusively of vegetables and fruits, and when it was 
over the landlady asked the governor how he liked 
it. "Very good, madam," said Mr. Seward, "very 
good indeed — for supper^ From the quizzical look 
he put on as he made the remark, we inferred that 
he would have been glad of even a " small penny- 
worth" of beef as a corrective of that "intolerable 
quantity " of succulence. 

Man is carnivorous as well as herbivorous, and, if 
fed on a diet of greens, is apt to hanker after " the 
flesh-pots of Egypt." 



FiSHmo. 57 



FISIIIj^G. 

I don't believe that since the Diluvian epoch, when 
Noah and his boys angled from the ark, for recreation 
and a chowder, there has existed a more enthusiastic 
fisherman than myself. 

The sun was in Pisces when I was born — a significant 
sign of my fishy future. At the age of one year I 
was predisposed to worms. At three, I began to dis- 
sect flies and study their anatomy ; and at four I was 
in the habit of hooking everything within my reach. 
Before the close of my first lustre, the natural bent of 
my genius was still more shiningly developed. I 
boned a skein of my mother's sewing-thread, tied it to 
the lash of my father's gig whip, and, with the frag- 
ment of one of my aunt's hairpins, commenced angling 
for tittlebats in the frog-ponds. My father, thinking 
such precocity should be rewarded with a rod, gave me 
one. 

When I was about eight yeais old, our family re- 
moved from the suburbs of New York to a villa up the 
Hudson, my father having been very successful in 
securing the shiners. I had now the satisfaction of 
dropping my *' dobber " into the river at Dobbs' Ferry. 
It was the scene of the first notable event in my pisca- 



58 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

torial career. One hot day in August, 18 — (never 
mind the units and tens), I rushed into the house, 
shrieking, in my childish treble, " Here's a "bass !" and 
waving aloft a squirming monster that must have 
weighed full half a pound. The agitation was too 
much for me. Brain fever supervened, and for weeks 
shoals of scaly horrors, of all sizes, shapes, and colors, 
wandered through the convolutions of my juvenile 
cerebrum in mad confusion. The doctors thought it 
would end with water in the head, but I recovered. 

The fisher-boy is father to the fisher-man. The 
" ruling passion " grew with my growth, and strength- 
ened with my strength. Strange to say, it still waxes, 
though I am on the wane. I have fished in most of the 
principal waters of the world, from the line to the 
neighborhood of both the poles, but have found no 
sport equal to that afforded by the streams of America. 
The big " cats " of the Mississippi and its tributaries, 
the swift and vigorous muscalonge of the St. Lawrence, 
the streaked bass of our northern inlets and rivers, the 
splendid salmon of the Columbia and Sacramento, the 
large black, red, and white trout of the lakes, with 
many other of the Goliahs of our inland seas and great 
water-courses, are no mean game to grapple with, even 
for a fisherman who " travels on his muscle." A thirty- 
pound " cat," rushing furiously up the current of the 
Mississippi, with the shank of a hook grasped in its 
vice-like jaws, like a bit between the teeth of a runaway 



FISHING. 59 

horse, is not the easiest thing in the world to land. 
The flexors and extensors of both arms will have all 
the starch taken out of them before the struggle is 
over, and the blunt-headed brute is hauled up the clay- 
bank, protesting, with loud sternutations, against being 
hoisted out of his native mud and water. But what 
delicious soup can be decocted out of his ugliness. A 
chowder is delectable, but cat-fish soup is a morceau 
that is more so. 

The muscalonge of the St. Lawrence and the lakes is 
an acrobat. Built like the pike — of whom he is the big 
brother — for feats of agility, he no sooner feels the 
barbed steel in his gullet, than he commences a series 
of writhings and contortions that would astonish an 
*' India-rubber man." He makes a semi-circle of him- 
self, and then springs back to a " normal " position as 
suddenly as a tense bow when the string is cut. He 
zig-zags horizontally, darts upward, darts downward, 
spins round, tuj:ns somersaults, and finally, if all these 
dodges fail, launches his lithe body, with a quiver, three 
feet into the air, and, coming down head foremost, darts 
off at a right angle like a streak of lightning. If this 
last maneuver does not break the tackle, the musca- 
longe gives in, and suffers himself to be lifted out of 
the water without betraying the slightest emotion. 
But for all that, in dislodging the hook from his mouth, 
look out for the chevaux de frise that guards the en- 
trance — the spikes are sharp. 



60 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

The bass, the salmon, and the lake trout are delight- 
ful fish to tussle with in the water, and, when glorified 
by an accomplished cook, the pride of the table on 
land. But, after all, the brooJc trout is the fish for me. 
It is the sliest, the cutest, the daintiest, the most beau- 
tiful, the purest, the most delicious of swimming crea- 
tures. Brook trouting is the very poetry of angling. 
It is an intellectual amusement, too, and requires as 
much caution, calculation, and prescience as a game of 
chess ; as fine touches of art as are necessary to perfect 
a picture or a statue. With his gold and silver thread, 
his silk and feathers, the artistic trouter should be able 
so to counterfeit any fly as to deceive its own mother. 
He should know, precisely, what kind of fly is the 
trout's particular weakness in every variety of season, 
weather, and locality; and, in fact, he ought to 
have an almost clairvoyant knowledge of the work- 
ings of the troutal mind. Thus accomplished, pos- 
sessed of the necessary executive skill, and supplied 
with the best implements that a Conroy can furnish, let 
him go forth in the cheerful May or early June to 
dimple the brook with his entomological forgeries. 
Betimes in the morning let him go, for the trout is an 
early riser — to the fly. He will fish up the stream, of 
course, for the fish lie with their heads that way, and 
as they cannot look backwards, like a hare, he can 
cause his mock insect to alight in advance of them 
without being himself observed. Through the meadow 



FISHING. 61 

where the rivulet, scarce a stride across, glides silently- 
through the grass ; along the gravelly bottom, where 
it sings and gurgles among the pebbles ; through the 
g.nps between the stony ridges, where it chafes and 
dances and raises its tiny roar among the splintered 
rocks ; and across the woods, where it turns, and 
doubles, and feigns to sleep in quiet pools, he must 
pursue 

" The noiseless tenor of Lis way." 

In every promising nook, on every inviting eddy, at 
the foot of every mimic cataract — in fact, in every spot 
where a trout would be likely to resort for fun or food 
or privacy — his fly must settle. After each deposit in 
his "creel," he may look around and admire the 
prospect, open his ears to the song of the spring birds, 
and sniff up the fresh odors which the world exhales in 
turning green. But all these things are to the trout- 
fisher as if they were not, while he is professionally 
engaged ; it is only in the pauses of his art that he 
ventures upon a parenthetical glance at the general 
features of the landscape. His basket filled, however, 
he has leisure to be sentimental, and can sit down on a 
fence and invoke the muses, if he happens to have the 
gift of jingle. 

But I am getting out of my depth, and possibly ex- 
hausting somebody's stock of patience. My sole object 
in writing this article was to ventilate my enthusiasm 



62 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

for the " gentle craft " in print. Felix Grundy said he 
was born a veteran — I was born a fisherman. When I 
read, in Dr. Livingstone's book, of a region in Africa 
where there was no water, I leaped from my chair in an 
agony of commiseration, exclaiming, " Miserable abori- 
gines ! what do they do for fish ?" If age or rheuma- 
tism should debar me from visiting the fish-frequented 
streams, I intend to have an aquarium constructed in 
my library, and angle in it from an easy-chair. I want 
to enjoy, as long as possible, the greatest pleasure this 
world can afford me, not knowing whether there are 
any fish in the next, or, if there be, whether it is per- 
missible to catch them. 



THE STREAMS. 63 



TEE STREAMS. 

The streams 1 — ^how pure, how beautiful, 

How holy do they seem, 
When somber twilight's shadow cool 

Subdues their golden gleam, 
"Where, in the willow-curtained pool, 

The wave-tired waters dream 1 

Where by the alder-circled cove 

And round the reedy isle, 
The peering wild-fowl softly move 

In many a shadowy file, 
And swallows dimple, as they rove, 

The silent lapse the while. 

River 1 where once in thoughtless mood 

I cast the whistling line, 
Above thy liquid solitude 

No more my paddles shine ; 
My oar is in the world's fierce flood, 

More dangerous than thine. 

But though hfe's flowers their leaves unclose 

Beneath its vernal beams. 
Yet memory from beneath its snows 

A blossom oft redeems. 



Q4: CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

And wafts the scent of spring's first rose 
Athwart our winter dreams : 

And thus, although youth's locks of gold 
Have long turned silver-gray, 

Visions of boyhood's pastimes bold 
Around me seem to play. 

And, by the streams I loved of old, 
My soul makes holiday. 



SUPPER. 65 



SUPPER. 

Despite the foul fiend Apoplexy, and the Protean 
imp Dyspepsia, men will sometimes eat late and luxu- 
rious suppers. If inordinate cups are unblessed, inor- 
dinate meals, eaten at hours when the inner man 
requires rest after the chemical and mechanical labors 
of the day, are equally undeserving of Heaven's benison; 
and when the two evils are combined, as they often are, 
the double excess deserves something more than a ne- 
gative rebuke from nature, and, sooner or later, always 
gets it. People who gorge and stupefy themselves 
with indigestible food and strong drinks, just before 
going to bed, are not bon v wants, but the reverse, and 
although they may say grace over their feast, it will 
assuredly not be blessed, but, as poor Joe says in 
"Bleak House," ''tothered." Such suppers are not in- 
cluded in the esthetics of epicureanism. They are the 
carnivals of debauch, and utterly abhorrent to that 
" quintessence of dust," the refined epicure. To such 
a one it is unnecessary to say, " pray you avoid them." 

It is our belief that immoderate suppers tended to 
produce the decline and fall of the Roman empire. 
Gibbon does not say so, it is true. It would have 



66 CRUMBS FROM TEE ROUND TABLE. 

spoiled the sonorous raarcli of his stately periods to 
intimate that to over-indulgence, at untimely seasons, 
in minced hedgehogs, stewed lampreys, fried grass- 
hoppers, baked dog, escalloped snails, and such " small 
deer," the nation " that filled seven centuries with a 
rapid succession of triumphs " owed its demoralization 
and decay. Yet we know that from the period when 
the world-conquerors became gluttonous, and com- 
menced drinking Falernian ad libitum, as if it had been 
lager-bier, the diminuendo movement of the empire 
commenced. As its suppers increased, its territories 
diminished. It became dyspeptic and peakish. Its 
armed hand trembled, its legs grew gouty, and under 
the hea^^ blows of barbarians, who lived on simple 
fare and retired to rest with the crows, it finally went 
to the bad. 

It was the same with the Greeks. As long as they 
adhered to their "bloodless suppers" of herbs and 
fruit, and bread, they did well. But when their sen- 
sualism attained such a pitch that a parasite on his way 
to a nocturnal feast turned back unless he heard a roar- 
ing in the kitchen chimney of his patron and saw thick 
clouds of smoke ascending from its top, then Greece 
began to. lose its prestige. In vain did that sage, 
though henpecked heathen, Socrates, stride into the 
supper saloons crying, " Beware of such food as per- 
suades a man to eat though he be not hungry, and of 
those liquors that will prevail with a man to drink 



SUPPER 67 

though he be not thirsty." Lais gave her petits soupers 
in spite of the sages, and the fast men and women of 
the day thronged to her evening parties, surfeited 
themselves with unwholesome viands, and got disgrace- 
fully drunk on Chian wine. National indigestion, 
superinduced by late suppers, predisposed the Greeks 
to defeat, and hence their overthrow at the battle of 
Cheronea, and entire subjugation by Philip and Alex- 
ander. As long as the Spartans supped on coarse 
bread, sopped in lenten broth, they were invincible. 

If we go further back into antiquity, we still find 
nocturnal gluttony exercising a disastrous influence 
over public afiairs. It was at a sumptuous midnight 
banquet, in his pavilion on the Euphrates, that Sarda- 
napalus was surprised by the non-supper-eating Arbaces 
and Beleses, and hence the downfall of Nineveh and 
the collapse of the first empire of Assyria. Belshazzar, 
although the grandson of a vegetarian (Nebuchad- 
nezzar), appears to have been fearfully addicted to 
excessive eating and drinking after dark, and he too 
was suddenly pounced upon in the midst of his mid- 
night repast, when he was unable either to fight or fly; 
and the next morning, at breakfast-time, it was an- 
nounced by the heralds of King Cyrus that Babylon 
the Great had fidlen. In this event we have a remark- 
able manifestation of the fact that Providence does not 
approve of late suppers. 

The Anglo-Saxons, prior to the Norman invasion, 



68 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

were the most prodigious eaters of their day, and they 
sometimes prolonged their evening feasts into the small 
hours, devouring immense quantities of solid meat and 
swilling vast beakers of spiced mead and hydromel. It 
may have been the obese habit of body and shortness 
of breath, engendered by such gormandizing, that led 
to their defeat by the more temperate and active Nor- 
mans at the battle of Hastings. Certain it is that the 
Normans introduced into England a more rational, and, 
at the same time, a more enjoyable dietary than that of 
the " Saxon hogs," as they were wont to call the sub- 
jugated race, and that the Normanized English waxed 
in strength and wisdom on their improved fare. Wil- 
liam the Conqueror and his followers supped at five 
o'clock p. M., and turned in at nine. Their final meal 
for the day was therefore thoroughly digested before 
they went to bed. When they sought repose they 
found it, and the next morning awoke like giants 
refreshed, and ready for raids, captures, and confis- 
cations. 

Until the days of the Stuarts, the English supper 
hour was from four to six, but that unhappy race made 
it later, and, with the aid of strong Hungarian wines, 
converted the meal into a prolonged debauch. And 
see what came of it. Charles I. lost his head ; Charles 
II. died of apoplexy or something of the kind, super- 
induced, probably, by overloading his stomach at un- 
timely seasons ; and James II. succumbed to a second 



SUPPER. 69 

William the Conqueror^ who supped at about the same 
hour as William I. 

In the reigns of the Georges, however, the English 
got into a habit of taking their suppers later than ever, 
and of drinking three or four glasses of hot spirits- 
and-water after them, by way of nightcap. The fourth 
of that interesting quaternity, humorously styled " the 
first gentleman in Europe," ate monstrously at night, 
and generally reeled to bed (when he was not carried 
there) full of meat and fiery potables. He lived longer 
than could have been expected under the circumstances, 
but during the last fifteen years of his life was decidedly 
the most bloated and unwholesome-looking animal 
within the limits of his own dominions. 

Fortunately, the day when enormous suppers were 
followed by enormous drinking has gone by in Great 
Britain, and the health of the United Kingdom, physi- 
cal, moral, and political, has, we have no doubt, been 
vastly improved by the change. The quiet and exem- 
plary Victoria put her little foot down peremptorily 
against such doings, and thereby saved thousands of 
her lieges from the nightmare and other ills that arise 
from over-stuffing and tippling at hours when all Chris- 
tian people, except policemen and military sentinels, 
should be in their beds. 

We Americans ordinarily take our last meal for the 
day at from six to seven o'clock. We have our game 
suppers, and oyster suppers, to be sure, now and then ; 



70 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

but even these are comparatively light affairs, and the 
half bottle or so of champagne a-piece that helps to 
give them zest, does not stultify us. Nevertheless, it is 
better to avoid such indulgences. Breakfast at eight, 
dinner at two, and tea and supper together at seven, 
will be found a good regime for health. And then to 
bed (as a rule) at half-past ten or eleven, with an even 
pulse, a cool head, a quiet stomach, and a clear con- 
science. 

To live well is one thing, to live *'fast" another. 
The man who desires to enjoy life cannot afford to play 
tricks with his digestion. The stomach is a most un- 
ruly member, and resents all such cavalier treatment, 
to the pain and sorrow of the experimenter. To out- 
rage the organ at bedtime, is to risk being haunted by 
retributive demons all night long, and to be m peril of 
a fit of hypochondriasis the next day. Temperance 
and regularity are essential portions of the esthetics 
of epicureanism. 



OCTOBER. 71 



OGTOBER-^SENTIMENTALLY AND SENSUOUSLY 
CONSIDERED. 

Reams have been written on the sylvan glories of 
the American autumn. Such pictorial thinkers as 
Brainerd, Bryant, and Washington Irving have re- 
produced them in thoughts that breathe their spicy 
fragrance and burn with their matchless splendor. 
As the season returns, memory recalls the old pic- 
tures of these poet-limners, and even amid the filth, 
the evil flavors, the coarse tumult of this sordid Baby- 
lon, the solemn quiet of the musky October woods 
seems to steal in upon our hard city natures, and 
tranquilize our restless city souls. 

Say not that the theme is hackneyed. Custom can- 
not stale its infinite poesy. Could we live a thousand 
years, the Eden that comes down from Heaven upon 
the earth with the sweet October sunbeams would 
charm our age as they charmed our youth and our 
maturity. It seems as if one were nearer Heaven dur- 
ing this " Sabbath of the year." The rural world looks 
saintlier than in the work-day season, when its mission 
is to grow. Nature ceases from her labors, puts on 
her holiday garments, and lapses into an ecstatic trance. 



72 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

"Wise is the citizen who goes out from the pent-up 
town into her large domain, to walk with her in her 
radiant dream, until the premonitory touch of winter 
begins to dissolve the delightful vision. Now, ere her 
features begin to stiffen and shrink in " cold obstruc- 
tion's apathy ;" now, ere she puts on her white grave- 
clothes, and goes down into her hard sepulcher, there 
to lie until spring, dressed in floral garlands, shall come 
to roll away the stone; now, while intensest green 
clothes the pastures, and all the hues of sunset flame 
on the wooded hills ; now, when the forest walks are 
paved with mossy verdure, and red, and purple, and 
yellow berries — ^vegetable gems — lie thick on the soft 
carpeting; now, while parasitic plants drape the 
rugged pillars of the sylvan temple with scarlet and 
gold, and hang in graceful festoons — that put to shame 
the most gorgeous upholstery of art— from tree to tree ; 
now, when the tawny nuts and acorns patter dowm 
with a pleasant sound on last year's withered leaves, and 
the squirrels are a-foraging ; now, ere the wood-thrush 
and the wren have ceased to warble, and while the 
late wild-flowers are still a-bloora; now, while the 
insect world is humming its melodious death-song; 
now, when the resplendent nights are lovelier even 
than the days, and the moon and stars seem to come 
nearer to the earth, as if enamored of its marvelous 
beauty — now is the time to leave the man-made town 
and give the soul a holiday in God's land. 



OCTOBER. 73 

Nor does this magulficent month delight the spirit 
alone. It is richly fraught with edible blessings that 
tickle the* sensibilities of the sensuous. And let it not 
be supposed that animal and poetic enjoyment are 
incompatible. A poetic temperament refines the ap- 
petite, and a fine appetite, well served, tends to sus- 
tain and vivify a poetic temperament. Thought 
cannot soar on a lenten diet; luxuriant (or lux- 
urious) imaginings were never yet born of Spartan 
fare. Kind Providence is cognizant of this impor- 
tant metaphysical fact, and hence has endowed senti- 
mental autumn — the season when the divine afflatus 
is most inclined to stir within us — with a rare assort- 
ment of creature comforts. In October all the meats 
become fat and juicy. October beef, mutton, and 
veal are no more like the same comestibles in mid 
July than one's age-dried and stringy grandmother is 
like a plump, elastic Hebe in her teens. And, then, 
look at the autumn dessert. Tilt your horn of plenty, 
buxom Pomona, and let us devour, with epicurean 
eyes, its contents — tasting the choicest of them now 
and then as we pursue our inquisition. Thanks to 
a tasteful Creator for these pears — "Bartlett's" and 
"Duchesses," under whose golden skins lusciousness 
lies a-melting, and voluptuous "Flemish Beauties," 
whose flushed cheeks an anchorite might be excused 
for biting. Here are grapes — Isabellas, Concords, and 
Catawbas — ^from the vineyards, and magnificent clus- 
4 



74: CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

ters nursed to absolute perfection under glass. Thanlcs 
to Noah or Bacchus — some say that Bacchus was 
none other than the great ark-wright of Scripture un- 
der a heathen name — ^for giving us the vine. Thanks 
to art and culture for blowing its natural globules to 
such full proportions, and filling them with super- 
natural flavors. Let us not waste pity on Anacreon. 
The poet-epicure had enjoyed the fruit before he was 
choked by the seed. He died with the flavor of the 
Chian grape upon his palate! Ah! — melons. The 
cantelope, rough as a ball of cordage without, but 
lined with edible gold, every mouthful of which is 
worth a prince's ransom. And what an aroma ! Aziia 
inhaled no odor more entrancing in the seduction-cham- 
ber of the Veiled Prophet. These water-melons, too 
— but let us cleave one through the center. Lo ! a 
double hive, full of honeycomb more delicious than 
was ever stored by the bees of Hybla in the *' hollow 
oak." Wait for us a moment, good reader, while we 
bury our face in a blushing segment — and take at once 
a bath and a banquet. There ! our whole inner-man 
is refreshed and comforted. Green-gages — eh? No 
wonder that some fifty years ago the " solid men " of 
England used to call a hundred thousand pounds a 
" plum." The green-gage, we take it, had been then 
but newly mtroduced, and shop-keeper John Bull, as he 
smacked his lips over its gum-saccharine, naturally com- 
pared it to that apple of his eye, his gold. What a 



OCTOBER. T5 

compliment to the fruit, that money-loving John should 
have likened it to a hundred thousand pounds ! What 
are these? — nectarines and apricots. We have seen 
better in Europe; for either from lack of proper cul- 
ture or because the climate is not propitious to them, 
the nectarine and the apricot dwindle and degenerate 
on this side of the Atlantic. They manage these mat- 
ters better in France. Here we have a shower of 
apples — Spitzenbergs, Seek-no-furthers, Baldwins, and 
Greenings. Excellent, no doubt, but we have no relish 
for them in the presence of the rarer autumn fruits. 
Let them be sent to the store-room until winter shall 
make them welcome — they will mellow in the mean 
time. A few peaches roll out of your cornucopia, 
Pomona, but they are the lees of the crop. The 
sumptuous specimens of the tribe went out with Sep- 
tember, and these are cold-humored and sallow. Em- 
balmed in white brandy, duly sugared, however, they 
will not be bad to take in December. 

And so, Pomona, we come to the little end of your 
horn, and to the end, too, of the space to which we 
must limit this gush of sentiment and sensuousness. 
Vale, reader, until we meet again in print, which, if 
this screed find favor with thee, we swear by all that is 
egotistic shall be before the waxing moon that gilds 
these fair October nights has gone the way of moons 
and men. 



76 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 



THE POETRY OF GOOD CHEER. 

DuGALD Stewart, the philosopHcal essayist, ranks 
accomplished cooks with great poets, and in reading 
the memoirs of distinguished men the refined epicurean 
is pleased to find that, as a general rule, the intellectual 
giants who, "like torches, have consumed themselves 
for the enlightenment of mankind," were very fond of 
good living. The bran-bread and non-carnivorous 
thinkers and writers, from Diogenes to Sylvester 
Graham, do not occupy a large space in history nor 
figure brilliantly on its pages. Shakspeare in his 
early youth hankered after the fat bucks in Sir Thomas 
Lucy's park, and in later life indulged m jolly dinners 
with rare Ben Jonson at the Mermaid. Dr. Johnson, 
the "Behemoth of Literature," scoffs at "peojDle who 
have a foolish way of not minding or pretending not to 
mind what they eat," and declares that he who does 
not study his stomach " will hardly mind anything 
else." The Doctor's particular weakness was veal pie, 
which is not a bad thing when the pastry is made by an 
expert and the contents duly seasoned ; but we regret 
to say that he marred his reputation as an aristologist by 



THE POETBY OF GOOD CHEER. 77 

eating lobster sauce with his plum-pudding. We honor 
him, however, for having left on record an emphatic 
protest against the Scotch abomination called a haggis^ 
which, according to Perry, is composed of the entrails 
of a sheep, chopped up with onions, herbs, and suet, 
and boiled in the sheep's maio. What a Scotch bag- 
pipe is to the ear, a Scotch haggis must be to the palate. 
Milton, notwithstanding his puritanism, is said to have 
fed his peerless muse with the choicest provender, and 
to have regarded a banquet missed as a paradise lost. 
His imitator, the bard of the " Seasons," was furiously 
fond of fruits, and in the autumn was accustomed to 
nibble at the peaches in his own garden as they hung 
temptingly in the sun. He always bit them on the 
red side, we are told, thus displaying the same taste 
for the florid in his appetite that is conspicuous in his 
poetry. That " solid man" in philosophy. Lord Bacon, 
loved dainties almost as well as bribes, and one of his 
biographers asserts that he caught the pulmonary com- 
plaint of which he died while engaged in stuffing a 
capon with snow ! Even the pious Fenelon had charm- 
ing ideas on the subject of good cheer, and sometimes 
wrote like an inspired voluptuary. In his " Voyage 
dans Vile des Flaisirs " he gives a description of the 
way in which the people of the mythical land of Co- 
cagne enjoyed themselves which makes the palate tin- 
gle. Cocagne, according to the philologists, is from 
coquere, " to cook," but Fenelon's Cocagnese have no 



78 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

trouble whatever with their viands, their dinners being 
gotten up in the most sumptuous style by culinary 
enchantment. According to Dr. Doran, however (who 
has given us, in his " Table Traits with Something on 
Them," a complete vade-mecum for the curious gastro- 
nome), the good archbishop borrowed the idea of his 
epicurean paradise from the Greek poet Teleclides, 
who thus (through the medium of a free translation) 
tells us how the world lived and junketed in its golden 
youth : 

Saturn loquitur. "I will tell you what sort of life I vouchsafed 
to men in the early ages of creation: In the first place, peace 
reigned universally, and was as common as the water you wash 
your hands with. Fear and disease were entirely unknown, and 
the earth provided spontaneously for every human wgnt; the rivers 
then poured cataracts of wine into the valleys, and cakes disputed 
with loaves to get into the mouth of man as he walked abroad, sup- 
plicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of excellent flavor and 
quahty; the tables were covered with fish, -which floated into the 
kitchens, and courteously put themselves to roast ; by the side of 
the dinner-couches rolled streams of sauces, bearing with them 
ready -roasted joints ; whDe rivulets full of ragouts flowed near the 
guests, who dipped in and took therefrom according to their fancy. 
Every one could eat of what he pleased, and all that he ate was 
sweet, succulent. There were countless pomegranate seeds, for 
seasoning ; little pates, done to a turn, insinuated themselves 
between the lips of the banqueters ; and tarts got smashed, in 
endeavoring to force themselves into the throat. Children played 
with delicacies as with toys ; and the men were gigantic in height 
and obese in figure." 



THE POETRY OF GOOD CHEER. 79 

A rare speech this, but singularly iaconsistent from 
the raouth of Saturn. Surely the poet had forgotten 
that the old god, as described in the Greek mythology, 
was of so undiscriminating a palate that he swallowed 
a paving-stone under the supposition that it was his 
infant son Jupiter. The thick-headed deity, who did 
not know a baby from a boulder, could never have 
given utterance to such a pleasant rhapsody. Besides 
the legend of Fenelon, there is another and more fami- 
liar story, which seems to us to have been borrowed from 
Teleclides ; to wit, that myth of our childhood's days 
which treats of a land where the streets are paved 
with gold, and the houses tiled with pancakes, and 
roast turkeys, with knives and forks for legs, prome- 
nade the thoroughfares, crying out, " Come eat me !" 

It is unnecessary to multiply instances of the epicu- 
rean proclivities of authors. From time immemorial 
they have lived on the fat of the land to the extent of 
their pecuniary ability, and often beyond it. The few 
exceptions are not worth naming — they merely estab- 
lish the rule. Long may the literati continue to be 
critics in cookery as well as in matters more ethereal, 
and Heaven send them the means of gratifying their 
praiseworthy dietetic tastes ! If we could choose their 
domicile for them, they should live in the 

" Land of Cocagne, 

That elysium of all that is friand and nice, 

"Wliere for hail they have bonbons, and claret for rain, 
And the skaters in winter show off on cream ice. 



80 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

" Where so ready all nature its cookery yields 
Maccaroni au parmesan grows in the fields ; 
Little birds fly about with tlie true pheasant taint, 
Arid the geese are all born with a liver complaint." 

To descend from the poetic to the practical : we 
intimated in a former article that America had much 
to learn in the esthetics of gastronomy. Touching 
numberless delicious relishes seen on the tables — es- 
pecially the breakfast and luncheon tables — of "the 
English epicures," Yankee Doodle and eke his wife are 
lamentably ignorant. Potted meats, potted shell-fish, 
and potted game are not on our bill of fare. Every 
well-to-do English family that pretends to live well has 
store of these bonnes bouches to set before its guests. 
The lady of the house prepares them or superintends 
their preparation, and whosoever has not tasted the 
transatlantic potted lobster, potted shrimps, potted 
crab, potted veal, potted beef, and potted game, has 
missed the same number of exquisite sensations. They 
are not costly luxuries — far from it — nor is it difficult 
to manufacture them. The meats are thoroughly 
boiled, then chopped, and then, with the addition 
of a little butter, reduced to a paste in a mortar. 
During the latter process they are judiciously seasoned 
— don't forget the mace. Next they are closely packed 
down in jars, and covered at the top with a layer 
about an eighth of an inch in thickness of liquefied butter. 
Winged game is generally potted whole, enveloped in 



THE POETRY OF GOOD CHEER. 81 

a Strong gravy, which becomes gelid when cold ; but 
sometimes the birds are boned, and then prepared and 
potted like the ordmary meats. Lobsters and crabs 
are usually potted in the same way; but shrimps 
should always be put down as they come from the 
hush, and the interstices in the jar, after the contents 
have been pretty closely wedged together by pressure, 
should be filled up with melted fresh butter. In all 
these articles much depends upon the seasoning — in 
fact, seasoning is the very soul of cookery. 

You can buy imported potted meats, shell-fish, etc., 
at some of the leading grocery and provision stores, 
but they are no more like the articles bearing the same 
names that are made in English homes than vin ordi- 
naire is like sparkling Burgundy. They are manufac- 
tured for this market after cheap recij^es, lack richness 
and flavor to begin with, and are more or less spoiled 
by the voyage. Things potted, to be worth eating, 
must be prepared at home. If American ladies will 
try their hands at these delicacies, we promise them 
the thanks of their countrymen. 

But have we not made a rather sharp descent from 

the attic heights of literature to the kitchen depths 

of culinary detail? We commenced among the poets, 

philosophers, and metaphysicians, and here we are, so 

to speak, with our sleeves rolled up, and disguised in 

a white cap and apron, standing by the kitchen di-esser. 

Well, what of it ! — did not the great LucuUus, who 
6 



82 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

won Heaven knows how many victories for Rome 
over the barbarians, now and then flourish a ladle as 
the chef of his own cuisine f 



SAVORY STANZAS FOR NOVEMBER, 83 



SAVORY STANZAS FOR NOVEMBER. 

Poets, who skyward mount and feed on ether, 

Far out of sight, among the starry host, 
Soar when you list, and tell us what you see there ; 

Of such excursions 'tis not mine to boast. 
My muse is not a transcendental ghost. 

But plump and buxom, and exceeding rich in 
Suggestive hints (of which I make the most) 

Touching morceaux to epicures bewitching — 
In short, an aproned muse whose Helicon 's the kitchen. 

Her I mvoke : forth at my call she rushes, 

Not downward, on a cloud, through fields of air, 
But, with her cheeks suffused with fiery blushes, 

Trips, blithely singing, up the kitchen stair. 
Lo 1 in her hand November's bill of fare — 

A goodly scroll, a muster-roll of dishes 
To make a fasting saint his Lent forswear. 

And fill his pious mind with carnal wishes — 
Longings for soups and joints, and game and flaky fishes. 

Talk of your Pegasus 1 — were he a draught-horse 
He ne'er could draw the contents of her carte, 

'Twould tire a lager-brewery's strongest shaft-horse, 
And break the noble beast's chevalria heart. 



84: CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

Oh ! what material for the hand of Art 1 

Could I but write lilce (shall I say like Tennyson ?) 

How would I make the gastric juices start 

"With a voluptuous, sensuous, thrilling benison, 
On woodcock, partridge, quail, and inch-deep-fattened venison 1 

Now are domestic meats most rich in juices, 

Now are all fowls domestic in their prime, 
And under Taste's experimenium cruds 

Each yields a flavor one may call sublime. 
November, gentle epicure, 's the time 

When palates, touched to finest issues, tingle. 
Hark! to the dinner-bell's inviting chime; 

It bids us all for one grand purpose mingle, 
And " makes the whole world kin " with its harmonious jingle. 

Come, let us dine. Mock turtle to commence with; 

Sheepshead — the slice beneath the dorsal fin ; 
Boiled turkey — celery sauce it is immense with ; 

Ven'son, with port wine gravy, not too thin ; 
A few escalloped oysters now throw in. 

And overlay with canvas-back, done lightly. 
Close with some Charlotte Eusse, and for your bin, 

Sauterne ; or, if you choose a tipple sprightly. 
Try effervescent Hock, a wine that suits me — sHghtly 1 

'Twould fill a page to catalogue each edible 
To which the month a perfect flavor gives ; 

Oh 1 Thomas Hood, 'twas gracelessness incredible 
To link its name with grewsome negatives. 

Now lean men, loose in fiber as old sieves, 
Laugh and grow fat, and age begins to royster. 



SAVORT STANZAS FOE NOVEMBER. 85 

In summer man exists, but now he lives. 
Even l)arefoot friars, pacing in their cloisters, 
Sigh, as they tell their beads, for plump November oysters. 

Oysters ! One needs the genius of a Shelley 

To fitly hymn those treasures of the sea — 
Salacious dabs of appetizing jelly I 

Sources of epigastric ecstasy. 
And lobsters, too, as firm as firm can be. 

And crimpled lettuce, tempt us in November, 
"With scores of cates from forest, lake, and lea — 

Dainties each gourmand's palate will remember, 
That might a glow awake in hfe's expiring ember. 

Cooks, do your best ; don't mar the savory bounties 

By Heaven vouchsafed to bless the inner man ; 
The choicest dish, ill-cooked, of no account is. 

So place not nature's luxuries under ban. 
Look to your seasonings well in pot and pan : 

The finest goiit the easiest to deprave is 
With sauces made on " the Canal Street plan." 

See that you give us rich and generous gravies, 
"With which the Loyal League might relish e'en Jefif. Davis. 

Enough. Dear kitchen muse, I now dismiss thee 

"With homage worthy of thy high desert. 
Methinks, at parting, I could almost kiss thee, 

Enchanting epicurean expert 1 
But thou art far too circumspect to flirt ; 

So fare thee well (so I desire to fare, too), 
And oh, endow our Irish help, inert, 

With skill, sound judgment, necessary care, too, 
The longings to fulfill that tasteful flesh is heir to. 



86 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 



EPIGASTRIC POETRY. 

We hear much m these days from the cognoscenti 
of high art, of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da 
Vinci, and other high old artists. But after all this is 
a realistic rather than an idealistic age, and seven- 
eighths of the community relish the lifelike materialism 
of the Dusseldorf school more keenly than the ethereal- 
ism of the great Italian masters. " Saints and Angels," 
say these unsentimental persons, " we have never seen. 
The emanations of high art which purport to represent 
them may be like them or they may not. But we 
know that the jolly interior of yon German wine-cellar, 
with its group of faces fuU of animal enjoyment, is 
true to nature, for it reminds us of scenes we have 
ourselves witnessed." Of course remarks of this kind 
are usually made sotto voce, for the virtuosos have pro- 
nounced materialistic painting to be an inferior branch 
of art, and when such Sir Oi-acles open their mouths, 
common folk must open their mouths too, and swallow, 
with respectful deference, if not with entire assent, the 
dictum of the critics. 

In poetry, as in pictures, the public taste inclines 
more to the familiar and simple than to the mystic and 



EPIGASTRIC POETRY. 87 

supernal, and sometimes, we regret to say, the liking 
for extreme simplicity is discreditably strong. For 
example, Tapper is more generally read and admired 
in England than Milton. There is, however, an agree- 
able mean between puerility and sublimity, and the 
bard who strikes this midway track, and tunes his un- 
pretending lyre to a popular theme as he pursues it, 
may chance to throw off a few rhymes now and then 
that will ring pleasantly in the popular ear. In our 
epicurean articles we have once or twice essayed to 
sing at table. Song is the natural language of content, 
and if ever that delightful condition is reahzed, it is by 
the epicure while contemplating the well-cooked food 
upon which he is about to wreak himself. We are 
yariously constituted, mentally and physically. The 
moon may inspire one man with poetic thoughts, 
mutton-chops with sauce piquante another. Emotions 
as deep and tender may be excited in the bosom of an 
aristologist by the savor of a canvas-back duck, as 
could be kindled in the soul of a lover by the softest 
sigh of the lady of his heart. Such at least is our 
theory ; and we can not help believing that the indi- 
vidual whose aspirations are for perfection in things 
edible is much more to be envied than the idolater 
who thinks he has found it sphered in crinoline. If 
Petrarch had been more of a hon vivant, he would 
have been less of a " spooney." We are free to say 
that the directest road to our imagination is through 



88 CRUMBS FROM TEE ROUND TABLE. 

the great sympathetic nerve, which, it may be as well 
to state, for the information of the non-physiological, 
takes its rise in the center of the epigastrium, and com- 
municates at one end with the whole nutritive system, 
and at the other with the brain. To the electric influ- 
ence exercised by that sensitive fiber over its upper 
terminus, the reader will please to ascribe whatever of 
merit or demerit may belong to the following rhymes : 

TO A ROAST smLom. 

Charles Second did one wise thing in Ms life ; 

He laid on thee, rare joint, the accolade. 
With Appetite's good sword, the carving-knife — 

A trustier weapon than his "Worcester blade. 
Of the Round Table, when he made thee knight, 

And bade his courtiers know thee as Sir Loin, 
'Twas deed as worthy of a royal wight 

As WilUam's fiercer sword-stroke at the BojTie. 

The hostile tints of England's roses twain 

Seem in thy savory fat and lean to blend, 
And from the under-loin what juices rain 

On the rapt palate I What a thrill they send 
Through all the inner man, while sense to soul 

The tinghng ecstasy communicates! 
But, ah I such themes mock Poesy's control, 

Their only fitting exponents are plates. 

TO A SWEETBREAD. 

From thy nest 
In the breast 



EPIGASTRIC POETRY. 89 

Of a tiling without mind, 

Wert thou taken, to rest 
In a spot more refined. 

Egg-and-bread-crumbed morceau 1 
Cooked (not fast, nor too slow) 

To a ravishing brown, 
The way thou shouldst go 

Let me marshal thee down ! 

TO A BOILED BASS. 

Stretched on a napkin of diaper fine. 
Welcome, thrice welcome, honne louche of the brine I 
Now for a slice from thy delicate side. 
Scooped with a silver knife, deftly applied: 
Smother in egg-sauce the morsel, and bring 
Hither the luxury fit for a king. 
Glorious 1 ecstatic! I swear by the mass 
Naught gives a tone to the palate like bass. 

"Fish should swim twice," says the proverb — ^bring wine: 
Here's to thee, fish of a flavor divine ! 
Where didst thou cruise in the summer-time, say? 
OflF Coney Island, Squam Beach, or Cape May ? 
Didst thou behold in the surf of the Sound 
Uppercrust Yenuses "bobbing around?" 
Or, coasting Newport, hear Fashion's Lurlines 
Shrieking in front of their bathing-machines? 
Near Blackwell's Island didst e'er cut a shine, 
Where there are land-sharks with jackets hke thine? 
At Sandy Hook with a hook wert thou ta'en, 
Or slUy meshed in the mouth of the Seine ? 



90 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

"Well, what's the odds where thy time has been passed, 
Where or by whom thou wert captured at last ? 
Man with some instrument 's certain, alas ! 
One time or other to pitch into bass. 

Nobler thy fate, though, and prouder thy shrine — 
Carved with pure silver, embalmed in rare wine — 
Than if the gulls, in thy juvenile day, 
Had from the surf borne thee, squhming, away, 
Up to some ledge, 'twixt the ocean and sky, 
Where they bolt raw the unfortunate fry. 
Better for thee than such gluttonous haste. 
Thus to be relished by Reason and Taste ; 
Thus to be hymned : fill the glasses agam, 
I'd be a fish if the sea were champagne ! 
Bid the band play as the bottle we pass, 
Strike the big bass-drum in honor of bass 1 

LIKES TO A WELD DUCK. 

A duck has been immortalized by Bryant — 

A wild one, too. 
Sweetly he liymned the creature blithe and buoyant. 

Cleaving the blue. 

But whoso says the duck through ether flying, 

Seen by the bard. 
Equaled the canvas-back before me lying. 

Tells a canard. 

Done to a turn ! The flesh a dark carnation, 
The gravy red. 



EPIGASTRIC POETRY. 91 

Four slices from the breast : on such a ration 
Gods never fed I 

Bryant, go to I To say thy lyric ghost duck, 

Traced on the sky, 
Was worthy to be named with this fine roast duck, 

Is "all my eyel" 



92 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 



A TEAITKSGIVINa RHAPSODY* 

The Pilgrim Fathers are entitled to the thanks of 
the present generation for having instituted this soul- 
and-body-comforting festival. It must be confessed, 
however, that they prefaced the good deed with a 
heathenish wrong. They wiped out Christmas, declar- 
ing it to be an invention of the evil one, or rather, to 
use their own phraseology, " a sinful device of papists 
and prelatists," of all whose forms and ceremonies they 
religiously believed the '* enemy of souls " to be the 
original suggestor. Their intolerance, it must be ad- 
mitted, was not utterly w^ithout excuse. They had a 
crow to pluck with the haughty churchmen by whom 
they had been driven from house and home, and Christ- 
mas being the most important feast in the calendar of 
Episcopacy, they determined to show their antipathy 
to the "sons of Belial" across the water by abolishing 
the great Christian holiday. Accordingly, they made 
its observance punishable by fine, imprisonment, and 
the pillory, and '' Thanksgiving " reigned in its stead. 
Even at this day, although the " blue laws," like their 
steeple-crowned enactors, have long been consigned to 
the limbo of things lost on earth, the ancient festival 

* Written in November, 1865. 



A THANKSGIVING RHAPSODY. 93 

of the Christian Church comes but lamely off in New 
England. In this connection it may he mentioned that 
some years after the Xew England Puritans had com- 
menced returning thanks, in public, for their providen- 
tial escape from "papistry and prelacy," the tables 
were turned upon them by an order commanding them 
to be piously grateful for the restoration of the "man 
of sin," Charles the Second, a. d. 1661. The edict must 
have been rather afflicting to the old Cromwellians ; 
but, being a prudent and thoughtful race, they pocketed 
their regrets, bowed stiffly to the rising sun, thanked 
Heaven for what could not be cured, and must, there- 
fore, be endured, and ate and drank success to his most 
sacred majesty with sensual relish and commendable 
equanimity. 

Saint-like men as they were, and with faces set as 
flint against billing and cooing on the Day of Rest, the 
early Puritans were not without their amiable carnal 
weaknesses. It is recorded of them that they highly 
enjoyed their Thanksgiving feasts ; eating and drinking, 
indeed, with a solemnity becoming patriarchs who 
birched their boys for smiling in the conventicle, and 
denounced Sabbatical salutes as tending to perdition, 
but nevertheless laying in the supplies with infinite 
gusto. Xor is the present generation of Xew England- 
ers unworthy, in this regard, of its worshipful progeni- 
tors, although, if we may judge from the portly por- 
traits of some of the ancient colonial Yankees, the 



94 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

moderns of the race scarcely thrive as well on good 
provender as did their noble ancestors. Perhaps this 
is because the minds of the latter-day Down-easters are 
of a keener, sharper, and more restless nature than 
those of their forefathers, and consequently destroy, 
by the process of abrasion, the fat that would other- 
wise romid off and cushion the angles of their frames. 
Or it may be that hereditary dyspepsia, originally en- 
gendered by OA^er-indulgence at Thanksgiving banquets, 
is the source of the attenuation. Be this as it may, 
the New Englanders of the present era are, as a people, 
somewhat spare, and there are irreverent vulgarians 
among us who are discourteous enough to call them 
slabsided. Far be it from us to countenance such 
jests on the configuration of our excellent neighbors. 
We honor them, we honor their paternal and maternal 
derivatives, and we honor and do honor to the glorious 
banquet of which the latter were the originators. Our 
fork hand must forget the cunning which impels it from 
the plate towards the palate, our palate be incapable of 
the sensations of which it even now experiences the 
premonitory tinglings, ere Ave can join in casting a slur 
upon the thanksgivers of New England or their ante- 
cedents. 

Preparations are now being made throughout the 
length and breadth of the land for spreading the 
Thanksorivinsf board. Of that anon. Grace before 
meat. Until we have improved the occasion the din- 



1 



A THANKSGIVING RHAPSODY. 95 

ner can wait. Why have we been called upon to eat 

it? for, as the greater always includes the less, 

of course the call to give thanks includes the call 
to the festal table. (First the "church-going bell," 
then the dinner tocsin, which is, in fact, the tocsin of 
the epigastrium, and not, as Byron erroneously and 
profanely sings, the tocsin of the soul.) 

We all know that there is deep cause for gratitude. 
There ought to be a thanksgiving hymn swelling in 
every American heart, ready to burst forth sponta- 
neously on the day of jubilee. Last year at this time 
we were thanking Heaven that the sword was doing 
its terrible but necessary work upon misguided men of 
our own race — onr kindred. Now we welcome them 
back from their mad estrangement, subdued and re- 
pentant, and forgive them as we hope to be forgiven. 
The Union is being re-established ; let the people to 
their knees. God thanked, let them go forth from the 
temples of worship happy and hopeful, saying gently, 
every one to his neighbor, " On earth peace, good-will 
to men." No more strife, no more bulletins of slaugh- 
ter, no more marshaling of fathers against sons, and 
brothers against brothers. It is past. Raise the 
thanksgiving psalm ; let it roll on through the firma- 
ment, one unbroken wave of grateful praise, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, from the forests of Maine to the 
cane-brakes of Texas. Truly there is an inviting open- 
ing for a lay sermon liere, and, had we th(> gift to 



96 CRUMBS FBOM THE ROUND TABLE. 

translate into eloquent words the feeling that stirs 
within us, the task should be essayed. As it is, we 
forbear, and, leaving to the duly authorized shepherds 
the ennobling labor of purveying spiritual aliment for 
their flocks, proceed to discuss the good things which 
follow the Thanksgiving sermon, and serve as a solid 
practical commentary on its allusions to the bounteous- 
ness of Heaven. 

Genial reader, if you have no better engagement, 
suppose we drop in upon a Thanksgiving party in the 
land of steady habits. Time and space are no obsta- 
cles to clairvoyant Fancy. Let us put ourselves en 
rapport with her. She takes the cue — we are there ! 
Having, luckily, the " receipt of fern-seed " about us, 
we stand invisible. A fine old family room this we 
have alighted in. The furniture is antique and quaint 
— almost May-flowerish. So, also, is the patriarch at 
the head of the ample table, which groans — ^no, 
laughs — with abundance. He is hard-featured and 
gaunt, but not of a forbidding aspect. He reminds 
one of Plymouth Rock, with a flood of hospitable sun- 
shine streaming over its rugged granite face. The old 
lady who faces him at the other end of the board has 
somewhat of a Pilgrim-motherly look about her. It 
would not be impossible to imagine that she had dis- 
cussed the witchcraft question with Mrs. Cotton 
Mather ; but there is a soft light in her quiet eye which 
is not of the days when Puritan dames lay awake o' 



A THANKSGIVING HEAPS ODY. 97 

nights listening for the war-whoop. On either side of 
the board are ranged the representatives of three 
generations — the "bearded grain" and the "flowers 
that grow between." From all points of the compass, 
from far and near, the old and young of the family- 
flock, led by the instinct of afiection, have come back 
to the old nesting-place. Some of the guests at last 
year's feast may, perchance, since then have fallen 
before the mighty reaper — toppled down with a touch, 
full of years and ripe for the harvest, or cut off" un- 
timely with a ruder stroke — ^but there are no vacant 
places. In New England families there is always a large 
reserve of cousins ready to be drafted into the Thanks- 
giving ranks when re-enforcements are required. A 
blessing has been asked on the banquet, while we have 
been digressing. ' So let us take a bird's-eye view of 
the creature comforts upon which it has been invoked. 
Verily they are worthy of being blessed, for they have 
not been rendered unacceptable by evil cookery. Bear 
in mind, this is an old-fashioned New England home. 
Modern degeneracy has not yet reached it. No kick- 
shaws here. The turkey is a twenty-five-pounder, full- 
chested as aprimo basso, tanned to an amber-brown hj 
a judicious application of caloric, and reeking incense 
that is to the epicure as the smoke of battle to the war- 
horse, prompting him to laugh ha ! ha ! in anticipatory 
ecstasy ! 
At this point we are reminded of certain lines of 



98 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

ours to a turkey, written in tlie very presence of the 
roasted creature, which seem in such perfect accord 
with the " subject matter " under consideration that we 
offer no apology for introducing them. Thus they 
read : — 

TO THE FESTIVE TDEKET. 

Fowl to all other fowls preferred — 
Except, perhaps, our public bird 
Of mighty beak and ponderous wing — 
Thee with a watering mouth I sing 1 

Bird of two meats — the brown and white — 

Which like the dual Niles unite, 

And in a single body run, 

Of tints diverse, in substance one — 

HaU. to thy bosom broad and puffed 1 

Plump as a maiden's cotton-stuffed. 

HaU to thy drum-sticks, dainties fine 

That served as "devils" seem divine. 

Hail to thy sidebones I — rich morceaux — 

And thy ecclesiastic nose, 

Which, to the laws of order blind, 

Nature has queerly placed behind. 

Tet scoffers vow they fitness see 

In Tiose of bishop following thee. 

And hint that ever nose of priest 

Turns eagerly toward savory feast, 

And as the shark astern, at sea. 

Tracks the doomed ship, still follows thee I 



A THANKSGIVING RHAPSODY. 99 

Methinks I see a dish borne in 

O'er-canopied with shining tin: 

From 'neath that dome a vapor rare 

Curls through the hospitable air. 

Presto I up goes the burnished lid, 

And lo, the bird its concave hid I 

I see thee, browned from crest to tail ; 

Bird of two meats, all hail I all hail ! 

Through thy round breast the keen steel glides, 

Rich ichor irrigates thy sides — 

"Dressing," to give the slices zest, 

Rolls from thy deep protuberant chest ; 

Then, tunneling in search of "cates," 

The spoon thy " innards " excavates, 

And forth, as from a darksome mine, 

Brings treasures for which gods might pine. 

Bird of the banquet I what to thee 
Are all the birds of melody ? 
■ Thy " merrythought " far more I love 
Thaai merriest music of the grove, 
And in thy "gobble," deep and clear, 
The gourmand^ s shibboleth I hear 1 
Of all earth's dainties there is none _ 
Like thee, to thank the Lord upon. 
And so receive my votive lay, 
Thou king-bird of Thanksgiving Day I 

But the glorious fowl is only an item — ^the most 
prominent one, however — of the goodly feast we are 
contemplating. While the husband, father, and grand- 
father — trio juncta in u?io — is hospitably " talking tur- 



100 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

key" and dealing with the bird's anatomy at one 
extremity of the table, the wife, mother, and 
grandmother — three affectionate beings rolled into one 
— is busy with the indispensable chicken-pie at the 
other. It is a mighty pasty — one that would have re- 
joiced the soul of the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst — 
round as the shield of Douglas, and its ligbtly ambered 
crust bossed with rosettes as big as dahlias. It 
needs not the aid of ornament to recommend it. The 
pie hath that within which passeth show. But our pen 
shall not dwell longer upon the savory subject ; it is 
too exciting. (With the assistance of plate and knife 
and fork it were a pleasing task to discuss it for half 
an hour.) There is great store of vegetables flanking 
the primary dishes : sweet potatoes, nuggets of mealy 
gold; the Irish tuber, beaten into a delicious com- 
post, with cream and salt and butter, and flushed 
with amber by the salamander; cauliflowers, with a 
drawn-butter dew upon their curdled heads; and a 
dozen other delectables of the kitchen garden. Among 
the " sarces " the gelid cranberry is conspicuous — a 
huge conglomerate of edible rubies ; and a vast brown 
pitcher of rare cider creams and mantles at the pa- 
triarch's elbow. Let us turn to the spacious mahog- 
any sideboard — one of the old make, built before the 
finical modern buffets came in. What a moh of pies ! 
Pumpkin, aj)ple, mince, peach, cranberry, and plum — 
all gems of the oven. Look at those round lakelets 



A THANKSGIVING RHAPSODY. 101 

of semi-opaque golden jelly, shored in by leafy crust 
of a pale topaz hue. Land of the Pilgrims ! if it were 
only for thy pumpkin-pies, we must needs love thee. 
What have we in the great China bowl? Apple- 
butter, by all that's saccharine and unctuous ! Well, 
there may be more delicious confections than this, but 
if there be, our gastric economy is not acquainted with 
them. Pound for pound, we would not exchange apple- 
butter, scientifically prepared, for guava jelly or any of 
the famous Jamaica sweetmeats. The baked Indian 
pudding, raisin-stuffed, has not yet made its appear- 
ance. It is kept in warm abeyance until the savory 
solids have been dealt upon. Its aroma, however, 
reaches us from the kitchen, intermingled with the 
appetizing fragrance of many kinds of cakes tbat shall 
grace the tea-table anon. 'Ware dyspepsia — and yet who 
would not brave a twinge or two to be thus banqueted ? 
Epicurean reader, sharer of our imaginary visit to this 
feast of fat things, are you satisfied ? You ought to be 
hungry. Ahracadahra! The spell of fancy is dis- 
solved. We are in N'ew York again. Go to Delmon- 
ico's and comfort your inner man with the choicest 
delicacies on his carte. But learn this beforehand: 
you will get nothing there comparable to such a 
Thanksgiving dinner as the one of whicli we have just 
taken a clairvoyant survey a little in advance of the 
November festival. 



102 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE, 



TEE BR00K8IDE IN MAY. 

Hast thou a gymDastic fancy, reader ? Can it turn 
a flying somersault with ours, sixty miles through the 
air, into a fair pastoral and sylvan region, newly beau- 
tified by the breath of May ? If so, we need no en- 
chanted carpet or cloud-cleaving steed; our elastic 
imaginations shall whirl us to the goal. One, two, 
three, and away ! 

Here we are by the brookside. This baby stream 
was cradled among yonder hills, and these sloping 
meadows are its playground. See how it dances 
through the greensward. Hark how it sings. But 
there are other choristers. The pleasant treble of the 
meadow lark, the sharp notes of gossiping blackbirds, 
the sonorous twang of the bull-frog, and the semitones 
of clouds of ephemerae, mingle with the refrain of the 
rivulet at our feet, and the pot-pourri is cheerful and 
exhilarating, if not harmonious. How sweet the 
springtide smells. A medley of pleasant odors as well 
as of pleasant sounds fills the air. The groves and 
fields could hardly have been more fragrant when the 
dew and sunshine of the primal May baptized their 
buds and blades. 



THE BROOKSIDE IN MAT. 103 

But it was not alone to "babble of green fields" 
that we left the "thick solitudes called social," to 
bivouac by the brookside. There be sliapely creatures 
clouded with purple and orange, and. bedropped with 
crimson, lying perdu under the ripples of this running 
water, waiting for what Providence may send them 
in the way of provant. We propose to be their evil 
genius, and have brought the implements with us to 
betray them to their ruin. Sooner, dear reader, shall 
you catch Mercury without his Caduceus than a vet- 
eran angler by a trout stream without his rod. Forth 
from thy well-worn case, old whipper of the brooks. 
Age has not robbed, thy joints of their suppleness, nor, 
thank the Providence that shapes men's ends, has it 
yet taken the elasticity out of ours. E pliiribus unum ; 
the sections are one. It is easier to reconstruct a rod 
than a republic. Is not this a wand fit for the right 
hand of a naiad ? A perfect taper from butt to top- 
most ring, light as a reed, and springy as a rapier. 
This multiplier, too, is a master-piece. Countless revo- 
lutions have not disorganized it, though it has immo- 
lated more victims than were ever guillotined in the 
Place de Greve. It takes not the accustomed fingers 
of the angler long to prepare his tackle. At the end 
of the transparent leader dangles a "brown hackle" — 
a killing fly, when the sun is shining softly through the 
golden mist of a May-day noon ; and now for a cast. 
Seest thou, reader, that bit of ruffled water, this side 



104 CRUMBS FROM TEE ROUND TABLE. 

of the gnarled, hump-backed old witch of a willow 
that is stooping to catch a glimpse of her nngainly 
shape in the stream? Right for the center of that 
little eddy shall our feather-fly make wing. Deftly 
done, by all that's entomological ! Had the lure been 
alive, it could not have dropped into the ripple more 
naturally. Aha ! Credulity in a broidered coat snaps 
at the temptation. A noble trout, a very emperor of 
the brook, and hooked past all redemption. Whir-r-rr ! 
how he makes the reel spin. See him dart from the 
surface, mad for freedom. Alas ! Wxhe acrobat, thy 
last flip-flap is at hand. Thou'rt e'en a-drowning, for 
a fish may have *' too much of water," as well as the 
fair Ophelia. It is mere folly to fight with destiny ; 
be guided, come ashore and die peacefully on the 
greensward. Shp the net under him, and we'll land 
him gently, " as if we loved him," as old Izaak says of 
the worm. There he lies, poor victim of overweening 
confidence, panting as a hart panteth after the water- 
brooks, and ever and anon making inefiectual leaps 
streamward. Canst tell us, reader, why a captured 
fish always jumps toward the water, even when he can 
not see it ? It is instinct, probably. But what is iji- 
stinct? We have asked this question of naturalists, 
metaphysicians, and other far-seeing individuals, but, 
sooth to say, their replies, though eminently profound, 
were utterly unintelligible. 

Pending the solution of the problem, let us continue 



THE BROOKSJDE IN MAY. 



105 



to beguile the fishes. One after another, from pool 
and rapid, and the whirling foam of fairy Min-ne-ha-has, 
we gather them in. The sun on his downward course 
is frescoing with prismatic hues the western wall of 
heaven, and the wicker basket at our belt is full offish 
as rarely tinted. What shall we do with them ? It 
were gross vandalism to consign them to the culinary 
mercies of the Maritornes of a village tavern. We 
have tried that before, and had our trout so bedeviled 
in the cooking that we hesitated to ask a blessing on 
them. Think of the sacrilege of frying brook trout in 
half-rancid dripping ! It is rank heathenism. Why 
send missionaries to the Feejee islanders when the 
choice gifts of the Great Provider are thus misused of 
pagans at home ? We will ask the untutored Celt 
who cooks the le:.thern steaks at yonder hostel, to put 
our delicate spoil into her refrigerator instead of her 
frying-pan. They shall to Kew York, packed in ice, 
and with our own hands we will manipulate them. 
But here we are at the door of the '' wayside inn," and 
our day's sport is ended. 

The "brothers of the angle," take them by and 
large, are not squeamishly veracious, and our little 
fish-story will no doubt be set down as slightly 
apocryphal. Nevertheless, we have really been a-May- 
ing among the streamlets, and have returned "edi- 
fied and built up." Our back is straighter, step 
firmer, hand steadier, head lighter than before we 



106 CRUMBS FROM THE ROUND TABLE. 

went into " the bush." The nymph Spring is not quite 
as forward as she was last year, but we happened to 
catch her in a melting mood, with a warm sun-flush on 
her cheek, and a very pleasant time we had together. 
Heaven's health-commissioners — gentle breezes vital- 
ized with the fresh breathings of tender grass and 
unfolding blossoms — are very potent to preserve in 
their full vigor body and soul, and as we strolled 
hither and thither, along the highways and by-ways 
of nature's green sanatorium, it seemed to us as if the 
blue fiend. Cholera, were as effectually barred out of 
that sweet pleasaunce as if it had been guarded, like 
Eden of old, with flaming swords. 

Man made the town, and we regret to say he made 
it very dirty. Returning to Gotham after our rural 
wanderings, we loathed its brick and mortar, its un- 
brooklike gutters, its unnatural smells. True, it had 
a flavor of green things, but they had decayed. The 
warm spring sunshine that was creating vegetation in 
the country was decomposing it in the city, and as we 
snuffed the vari-scented atmosphere we sympathized 
with Coleridge's sensations in the streets of Cologne. 
Our sanctum looked dismal contrasted with the beauty 
and the brightness we had just left. Dust lay thick 
upon the desk and choked the inkstand, and, as we 
feather-brushed the one and refilled the other, we 
made a vow to the pastoral gods to return with all 
convenient speed to their bucolic realm. 



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The Poetry of Germany. Selections from 

the most celebrated Poets, translated into English verse, 

witli the original text on the opposite page, by A. Basker- 

viLLE. Fifth edition. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00; 

half morocco, $3.00. 

This work, embracing 664 pages, gives choice selections of more than 
seventy of the first German poets, including the latest writers, with a 
note of the birth and place of residence of each. Each poem is given 
in fall, German as well as English, rendering the booiv invaluable to all 
-students of the former language. 

Four American Poems. The Raven. The 

Bells. Lenore. The Rose. Metrically translated into 

German by Charles Theodore Eben. With the original text 

on the opposite page. 1 6mo. Price, 25 cents. 

"9o well has he succeeded in rendering them into German, that they 
read like veritable productions of Germany." — Worcester Palladium. 



Mendelssohn's Letters from Italy and 

Switzerland. Translated from the German by Lady Wal- 
lace. With a Biographical Notice by Jttlik dk Mar- 
GUERiTTEs, 1 vol., 16mo. Clotli. Price, $l.1b. 

'•lutliese letters, the playful, aflfectionat.e nature of the man sheds 
everywhere the h»veliest radiance. A murmur of gong seems to have 
run through all his letters. They are the converse of his Songs without 
Words; and we venture to predict that the Letters of Mendelssohn will 
become as classical as thoee compositions ... It is t^eldom that we have 
inclination to speak of a book in terms of equal warmth. We must add 
that Lady Wallace has performed her part of translator in a manner 
beyond all praise." — Partheuon. 

Mendelssohn's Letters from 1833 to 1847. 

With a Catalogue of all his musical compositions. Trans- 
lated from the German by Lady Wallace. 1 vol., 16rao. 
Cloth. Price, $1.75. 

"There is not a page in this delightful volume which would not yield 
matter of pleasure and instruction to the reader."— i.o?ic?07i AthencBum. 

'• We wish our religious societies would call out a few of the letters 
of this man and scatter them broadcast over the land : they vvould 
indeed be 'leaves for the healing of the nations."'— -If /wji^io Monthly. 

Life of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdyo 

From the German of W. A. Lampadius, with Supplementary 

Sketches by Julius Benedict, Henry F, Chorley, Lud- 

wiG Rellstab, Bayard Taylor, R. S. Willis, and J. S. 

D WIGHT. Edited and translated by William Leonhard 

Gage. With portrait. 1 vol., 16mo. Cloth. Top gilt. 

Price, $1.T5. 

"The short but interesting life hf Lampadius is still the best, the only 
ilfe of real value With the letters for illustration, it will be impos- 
sible for any musical person to read it without interest." — Dirighfs 
Journal of Music. 



Immen-See. Grandmother and Grand- 
daughter. Two Tales from the German. 1 vol., 16mo. 
Price, S5 cts. The same on tinted paper. Cloth. Price, 75 cts. 

"Grracefnl and Charming." — Lonflon Athenrpum. 



Life of Chopin. By F. Liszt. Trans- 
lated from the French by Mrs. Martha Walker Cook. 1 
vol., 16mo. Printed on tinted paper. With a Photograph. 
Cloth. Price, |1.50. 

" In spite of the trammels of words, it gives expression to the same 
subtle and ethereul conceptions which inspired the genius of Liszt as a 
musical artist. As a sketch of thi^ life, of the great composer, it possesses 
an interest with which few biugrapliical works can compare.'" — Tribtme. 

Musical Sketches. By Elise Polko. 

Translated from the Sixth German Edition by Fanny Fuller. 
1 vol., 16mo. Tinted paper. Cloth. Price, |1.75. 

"Elise Polko is a very delicate prose poet, who reminds us somewhat 
of De La Motte Fouqu6. She has an infinity of enthusiasm, and the 
dream-essays she has wrought out from the lives of those eminent in 
musical composition are many of them remarkably delicate, graceful, 
and beautiful. The book is finely translated, rdl the tenderness and 
simple pathos of the original being apparently fully preserved. Few 
collections of partially imaginative sketches have lately appeared so 
likely to please the lovers of this peculiar branch of literature."— Boston 
Evening Gazette. 

'' The sketch of Bach and his performance of ' A mighty fortress is our 
God," before the Court at Dresden, contains some passages displaying a 
luxuriousuess of description scarcely surpassed by De Quincey in his 
happiest moods." — Publishers' Circular. 

The Ice-Maiden, and other Tales. By 

Eans Christian Andersen. Translated from the German 
by Miss Fanny Fuller. 1 vol., 16mo. Printed on tinted 
paper. Cloth. Price, 75 cts.# 

"What Shakespeare is in poetry and the drama, Hans Christian An- 
dersen is in children's stories,— the 'myriad-minded' master of fairy- 
land. The latest growth of his prolific mind is a little knot of divers- 
colored blossoms, four in all (' The Ice-Maiden,' etc.). The first-named 
is the longest,— a pretty bistoriette, brim-full of the daintiest poetry : 
the other three are short fantastic anecdotes, as it were, of art and na- 
ture; but, short as they are, they are radiant with the genius of Ander- 
sen. The volume is charmingly got up," etc—World, 



